Contradicting Advice!!!

By eliza490 · Dec 8, 2009 ·
  1. One of the most frustrating things I've experienced in my journey as a writer is getting contradicting advice from people. Someone tells me how to handle a certain situation and I think I'm good to go. Then, suddenly, someone else tells me something totally different. Here are some examples.

    -"You always have to send a query letter before submitting a short story or article" It actually depends on where you're submitting my work. Some magazines will prefer a query letter first, and some will allow you to send in what you've written without a query letter. It just annoys me that someone actually told me that query letters were needed before submissions across the board when that's obviously not the case. It's okay to tell someone what you're experience was when you got published, but don't go around telling people that that's the way it always is if that's not true.

    -"You can never get an advance or get a publisher to accept your work before your book is complete" Actually, that is possible. I've read a few books on book proposals and I enjoy reading what published writers have to say about the process. You can have your work accepted before it's complete. Most of the people who are able to do this have already made a name for themselves in some way, but they were still able to do it. It's annoying hearing people say that it's impossible when it happens all the time.

    Anyone else have any examples of someone giving them advice that later turned out to be false or exaggerated? It drives me crazy!!

    ~Eliza

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