Been There, Done That #mfrwauthor

Welcome to week 33 of the MFRW 52-week challenge. The topic is "Giving and Taking Advice - How it can hurt?"

Why did I pick the title? We've all been there. An inadvertently voiced comment about something you're working on and suddenly you're in for a twenty- or thirty-minute lecture on how XX should be done. It doesn't matter the topic or even whether you yourself are considered knowledgeable in the area, there is always one in every crowd who knows everything about everything. So should you wholeheartedly implement their advice or take it with a grain of salt. If a point sounds true, holds up to additional research, and is helpful, go for it.

However, the prompt also covers the flip side. My first thought when I saw the prompt was to think about the hundreds (or thousands) of how to books about writing your novel. They range from short pontifications about one person's experience getting published and may have no relevance to your genre or situation. Others may be scholarly or well-researched and filled with examples. A single fact or hint might make the difference between a good book and a great one, or getting you out of a slump.

Doesn't sound like a bad thing? However, every writer is different. What works for one might not for work another because of their personality, genre, learning style, and even what project(s) are in play. My favorite line in my lectures on outlining, is that the various forms in my novel notebooks and series bibles are tools. Not every project needs every form. I wouldn't want to go back and do an in-depth storyboard for a book that is already running at 150 thousand words. However, creating a spreadsheet of four or five pieces of each information for each character could reduce potential errors such as changing the color of a character's eyes or hair, or mixing up names and locations between books and series.

Another point with advice. You can get so caught up on reading other's suggestions that you don't actually get any writing done.

Advice is only as helpful as it fits your needs. Don't get caught up that you're doing something wrong just because another author. Or it may not even be an author, one of the worst encounters I've had regarding advice was with an author who had just signed their first contract and had not even gone through their first round of peer reviews or professional edits. As I always start my critiques, "Use or toss as you will. It's your voice."

Hope you'll stop by and see the other posts on the topic.

~till next time, Happy Writing. Helen