Bad Advice, Good Advice

 

A few years ago, it struck me that I had probably been given more bad than good advice about writing over the years, all of it from well-meaning 'experts'. I've been known to hand out quite a bit of writing advice myself over the years and sometimes I find myself thinking 'have I done more harm than good?' and not being at all sure of the answer. Although when I have commented on a piece of writing, I do tend to do so with a huge proviso that nobody should ever take anyone's else's opinion as gospel. Not ever. 

One of the most worrying aspects of my time spent as Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow, at the University of the West of Scotland, where my job was to help students with their academic writing, always came when that academic writing involved some aspect of creative writing. I vividly remember telling one student that she needed to take her script away and 'play with it'. 

She looked horrified. 'But we can't play with it,' she said. 'We have to get it right!' 

How could I possibly explain to her that most professional writers spend hours, days, weeks 'playing' with an idea, trying to find out if it's viable, trying to find out what works and what doesn't. And more to the point, why were her lecturers telling her that there was any one way of 'getting it right'. Bad advice indeed. 

Bad advice I've been given over the years? 

Don't turn this radio play into a stage play. (It was crying out to be turned into a stage play.)

Nobody is interested in the supernatural. (You're kidding me, right?) 

This is a library novel fit only for housewives. Bin it. (You can read that novel here. I still get messages from people telling me how much they like it - but perhaps they're housewives!) 

Listen to your script editor. They have your best interests at heart.  (Some do, some definitely don't. The trick is knowing the difference.) 

Don't self publish. Nobody will ever read it. 

We don't have any development money in the budget. (There is, in fact, a budget. They just decided not to pay the writer.) 

Best advice I've been given over the years? Two gems that have never lost their power to inspire.

Stop watering your Dylan Thomas adjectives and watching them grow 

The only way to learn how to write is to write. And read. A lot.

Which leads me to the unexpectedly worst possible advice I've had. I used to believe it. Hell, I've probably said it myself to emerging writers. 

Write about what you know about.

That way, boredom and madness lies. I know there is some truth in it. If you're writing about - for example - Scotland, it helps to know a bit about the country. If you're setting your novel or story in an unfamiliar city, you'd better find out what you can about it. If your feisty 18th century heroine is doing things that no 18th century woman would ever do, or knowing things that she would never know, you might need to have a rethink. 

But for heaven's sake, don't be afraid to use your imagination. Stretch it. Make some leaps into the dark and see where you land. Even when I was routinely telling people to write about what they knew about, I would always qualify it with 'but you know more than you think.' Not only that, but you can find out almost anything.

Use that knowledge in a million imaginative ways. That's what writers do.