Amy’s Bad Advice #1

On writing…

It’s worth what you paid for it.

Amy’s bad advice for seeing your work with fresh eyes.

Believe it or not, this is not advice from the source, I read it somewhere and gave it a shot…literally…

Then I hand wrote this post in my journal while simultaneously mouse scrolling my manuscript on the computer. (Ambidexterity is a handy skill) I do admit that my Norwegian grandmother would have been ashamed of my penmanship. I too found it questionable. (And hard to transcribe🤫)

So you have edited your book many times, so many that you could easily recite it verbatim like a monologue for the school play. Your betas are exhausted and you’re without a CP. What do you do?

Drink. Drink a bit, not enough to take residence in your toilet bowl, and not so much that you can no longer read. Just a bit. Just enough.

Then….

Bask in the glory of your own work. Or balk at the horror of it. Either way you’ll have the fresh eyes of a new born baby. It seems like a very writerly thing it do right? Glamourous Martini drinking in a dim room with a typewriter? Smoke looming thick in the air from your cigar? Fedora artfully a tilt? I feel dashing just suggesting it.

I suppose an alternate outcome would be sulking in the corner lamenting your vices and cursing this ugly world we live in…. But that sounds pretty writerly too now doesn’t it?

There it is my writers, Amy’s Bad Advice #1. See above quote fot its value.

What’s the worst writing advice you’ve ever been given? This? I love our repartee.

Cheers, Amy