Advice for Writers Makes You Crazy

[Peg Herring]

For five years now I've been reading advice from publishers, editors, agents, and fellow writers about how to succeed in the business of selling a book. I have had some success, but I also feel at times like I'm buried in advice.

Don't start with a prologue! You must have a hook! Format exactly as the industry demands! Number your pages on the right! No, number on the left, next to the slug! Make the first line block style! Indent EVERY paragraph! Ban widow/orphan control! Make your characters speak for themselves! Provide sensory details! Leave the reader hanging at the end of every chapter! Make the action rise and fall several times in the course of the story!

I could go on, but you get the idea. These are all great things to internalize (except when they contradict each other), but the poor slob struggling with telling her story can feel like she's drowning in a sea of commands, rather like that time back in college with the teacher whose demands could never be satisfied. As I said, I've had some success, so I know that there are times when the ingenuous, first-time writer is pitied by the mavens of publishing and forgiven for uneven bottom margins and improper em dashes.

I guess the solution is to write as you write and then see what you've got. If there's a prologue, only you can decide if it has to be there. When a chapter ends, it has to be because you feel that it needs to. And if the formatting is the best you can make it at the stage of development that you're in, you'll do better next time. You just have to be sure there is a next time.

And don't get me started on marketing advice!