Early on in this whole writing thing, I ran across a bizarre piece of advice. To paraphrase: "If really love something in your writing, that's the part you need to delete." (That's not it exactly, and I can't find the link to who said it, but that was the general gist.)
Let's say it again: If you really love part of your work, you should delete it.
Ummm. Huh? I really don't what to say in response to that. It's one of those nifty little tidbits that has me shaking my head in disbelief. I mean, this isn't a case of 'If you love something set it free, and if it comes back to you, it's yours.' They aren't advocating deleting a piece of work, and then rewriting it (which would be insane, but at least partially better than cutting off your nose to spite your face).
Another related piece of advice I remember seeing on some agent website was along the lines of: writing should never reflect the opinions of the writer.
Once again, let me say: Ummm. Huh?
If they mean, you need to step back from your writing and get an objective view of it... Then they need to speak more clearly. I'm all for that. But you can't write something and NOT reflect your opinions. Unless you do it on purpose, and then you're undercutting who you are as a human being. Everything I write reflects who I am and what I think about life. If that's a bad thing by a particular agent's standards, so be it.
As you surf through the internet, or read any of the many books about this industry, you are going to run across many many pieces of advice. Take each with a grain of salt. (Including anything in this blog.) Look for the truth in the words, and if you don't find any... Run. Run far and run fast.
The Long Trek Back
3 weeks ago
1 comment:
I don't buy that tidbit of advice either. I think there comes a point when you have to look at your prose objectively and decide whether a passage is too flowery, and decide whether to whack it or not, but chop it just because you think it's good? No way.
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