It is pretty clear to me that you can't break the rules unless you know what they are. Without properly structured learning, you are going to be working somewhat blind. How can you possibly know what's wrong, what to fix, how to fit it? Either way, we all have to start at the bottom and the journey can be challenging. I think that is why the rule book gets the blame, but surely that is just exasperation rearing its head. It's the writers equivalent to wrapping a golf club around a tree (yes I have done this!) Stupid I know, but that doesn't mean we are stupid all the time. Oh, and I could not agree more Xoic. Brilliant!
There is a thing we talk about in education as a bit of a joke. In the spirit of Friends we say "they don't know that they don't know." Really its just that students have no idea what they don't know. A writing coach will educate you. There are so many things about writing even the masters don't know. You could spend a lifetime learning about writing and only scratch the surface. While any uneducated writer can still create beautiful art, become successful, and write as a profession, becoming educated in writing can be FUN! So if you ever get the chance to get a coach try it out. Of course not all coaches know what the hell they are talking about, so they should be screened.
There are so many free videos on YouTube from authors giving advice and basically conducting writing courses that paying for a class right now seems unnecessary for me. In terms of a writing coach, I am waiting until I have my 2nd draft complete before consulting with anyone. At that point I will utilize beta readers to help me complete subsequent edits until I feel it's ready to query.
I've never been disappointed with the money I've spent with the Open University and I've done everything from astronomy, particle physics, law, psychology, history, geology, neuroscience - figured I might as well do something useful for a change
Even the best professionals use coaches their entire careers. Sports is an easy analogy. The best hitter in baseball has a hitting coach. The best in their field anywhere has coaches, sports or not. The highest level CEOs continue training their entire lives. There's an old saying I believe is true, "A person who always thinks they're the smartest person in the room gets more ignorant every day because they never learn anything." Of course there are bad coaches. Even bad coaches can have positive effects. Back in the day I coached youth sports. I was at a seminar presented by a well-known athlete in their field who said, "I don't know who to thank more, the coach who believed in me or the coach who didn't." When I'd address beginners, I told them, "If you stay in this sport a while, you're going to have a bunch of different coaches along the way who will tell you completely different things. It's up to you to decide whether to take their advice about what works best for you." The learning process advances whether you're being advised by a good coach or not. Of course a bad coach can screw up a player pretty bad, but if that player is exposed to many different coaches, they'll figure it out on their own. I once worked with a proofer who thought it was her job to rewrite manuscripts to fit her pretentious old-English style of writing, complete with overlong paragraphs and overuse of choking semicolons. At a meeting of the editorial department I suggested we bring in a writing expert for a day to help us hone our writing skills. The idea was well received by most, then the semi-colon addict erupted, clearly taking the suggestion as a deeply personal insult, and demanded to know what my real motive was. I mentioned something about proper use of semicolons, and for the first time I my life I'm sure I saw actual smoke coming out of someone's ears. "YOU JUST HAVE TO UNDERSTAND HOW TO USE THEM!!!" That was the last time we ever had anything approaching a civil conversation. That was a great example of someone thinking they're the smartest person in the room. As an aside, the last phone conversation we had was after I'd started a successful company and the wizard of smart called me for free product she was entitled to because, "I helped bring you along!," which triggered the only time in my adult life that I hung up a phone on someone. But I digress...
I have been writing for a while and many of my friends and family luff my works. I had to take a creative writing class at school as part of my Digital Film and Video major and something strange happened. vidmate.app saveinsta
For what it's worth, I run a writer's group in Central Ohio, and the moment a new person joins my group, they are instantly privy to a writing coach or three. A rarely known fact is that writing is peer taught. You can only go so far in school, and most English classes are worthless for the purpose of writing literature. They are big on essays and business writing, but that's only the tip of the iceberg and actually counter-productive on some levels. Find a good writer's group that submits in advance (hopefully electronically) and has competent writers onboard to review things in both detail and overall concept.
This thread hasn't had any safety warnings in its last several pages so it bears repeating: paid-for mentoring involves some risk. If we're at a point where we can tell the bad actors apart by their ads/writing/typing then probably we don't need a mentor anyway A precious thing about WF's workshop is that it's free and open - so if anyone gives peculiar or slanted advice it gets called out It's good that it's voluntary too, because if someone has to repeatedly critique my 2000w snippets of YA vampire romance in order to get paid, before long they'll be tempted to start watching anime in the background, even if they're professional and open with me about my flagrant mediocrity Something that's interesting about WF is that the threads very rarely develop into anything like a pupil/mentor dynamic There's nothing preventing that - if someone earnestly took everyone's comments on board and kept re-submitting improved versions of their work, we'd keep helping indefinitely But in practice, when most people get some honest critique (and WF is very honest), they vanish Some only need a few insightful comments to get their story on-track (and not a mentor), others realize writing isn't for them But in my peculiar and slanted opinion, there's an even worse problem under the surface: an industrial parasite that seizes any Novelty as soon as it's born and shits it out as Convention, burying the world's beautiful novels under mountains of well-written books
Just have to say you can go all the way in school for creative writing. There's the MFA and also you can get a PhD in creative writing. I don't see writing as something peer taught. Of course, you can learn from your fellow writer, but IMO that's different from studying with a master.
Usually that's true, insofar as a PHD in writing ought to be valuable. I'm a strong believer in the power of education, having racked up 10 years of college, myself. It is also true that most writers and most writer's groups are not going to progress one very far. I've been in seven of them, and only two have been very helpful.
