How to Avoid Being Fooled by Bad Writing Advice

How to Avoid Being Fooled by Bad Writing Advice

On realizing your life isn't over

Open your eyes girl! 

Push away the grime staining your brain. 

Acknowledge, 

aquire, 

respect. 

Determination won't save you now. 

Sheer obstinateness grants you grace. 

On avoiding the passive voice

I struggle with avoiding the passive voice. It's said that a writer who uses the passive voice is insecure about their work, and maybe their right, nevertheless, her is my attempt to begin the exodus of passive voice from my writing. It's rocky, but it will get better. After all, this is a journey isn't it? Perhaps this marks the beginning of me settling into confidence. Anyway, heres the passage:

Jack sits on the bed, his feet hang over the side. He looks past his knobby knees like a person looking down the face of a cliff- in awe and fear. The light from the window creeps over the windowsill and crawls across the floor but still Jack stares. Still Jack sits. The typewriter stands silent, cold. The words are only a whisper in the back of his mind. Jack can stare as hard as he likes . . . the story will not come back. Shane will not come back. No one comes back. 

The sunlight gave up on Jacks room and slunk back over the windowsill.

Tifling

Shard is a tifling rogue who cares for nothing and no one but herself and her livelihood. Her real name is unknown. Her appearance is the only form of identification is the spiked, shard-like feathers that stick out of her head. Her weapon of choice keeps her hands clean and disposes of you from a distance, yes she uses a crossbow, and a heavy one. When she lands a blow,  it will be the first, and last you will know of her presence. Now don’t get me wrong, she can’t avoid the occasional up close and personal encounter, her greatest feat was the time she squared off with a ten foot Guantar. Of course she angered it, she dared it to charge, and once it did she slid between its legs and stabbed it in the tailbone. When she wiped the blood off her poisoned dagger the massive things children whimpered and mewed in sorrow.  “How will we eat?” they cry at the back of her shrinking form. She does not answer.  

Green Eyed Shadow

Jack repressed the headache with the back of his hand. It was already late and he was still only half finished. The words on the page spread out before him like highway that disappeared from sight before the end. 

"And miles to go before I sleep . . ." he muttered to the glow of the computer. It was the only company he had in the pitched silence of the room. He shoveled some more willpower into the furnace of his brain and began typing again. Slow at first, but after a while he settled into the flow of his mind and produced a steady rhythm of sentences. 

So immersed was Jack that he didn't realize the change in pressure as a door opened and closed in the living room. The shadow found it easy, so very easy to stand so very close to the typing man. The shadow could smell the must of a few days absence of shower on him, the oils rising like a filmy fog. "Oh this will be so very easy" whispered the blade as it slid out of the sheath and into the base of the man's neck. 

The keyboard stops clacking, the computer screen starts flickering, and in its fading glow the face of a green eyed woman without a mouth examines her work. Where lips would be press against where fleshy cheek would sit.  But alas, the man with miles to go has broken down on the side of the road. The stretch of words fades into oblivion. There is only darkness. 

The shadow leaves just as she came, without a passing thought to Jack staring into the blackness of the room.  The blade is glowing now, and soon, oh so very soon, it will be bright enough to pierce the hearts that truly matter. 

On Networking to the First Job

         Its never the first step that's the issue, it's what happens after that first step. So you have made it. You graduated. Congratulations! Have lunch with you family, go out and get wasted with your friends, update your resume and smile at your accomplishment.

         Now to do something with it.

         This is where to watch that perilous stretch of stepping stones rise out of the river rushing in front of you. This is the writers attempt at a metaphor for networking, did you find it amusing? Not the point. Time to pick up the phone and schedule a meeting with everyone you know who is both successful and connected to someone in the field you want to pursue. In my case its the writing industry, the publishing world, and the realm of  makeup artistry.

          Work hard. Wrack your brain and your legal pad for all the burning questions that will lead you to that dream job. Pull the suit out of the closet and put it on. On the way to the interview rehearse your opener and your bullet points until your blue in the face, until its so natural its like someone slapped the words on your brain like a slab of meat on a steel table. Know your questions raw and well done. I swear I'll stop with the butcher metaphors now.  Use your best professional voice. Cross your ankles and whatever you do: don't stare and don't say "um".

          After your pitch (which should sound like your asking for advice on how to get a job and not "please could you try and get me a job as a writer somewhere?) is the most important part: listening to every word they say. These people are the keys to your future. They may only give you breadcrumbs to follow, but if you listen to the words coming out of their mouth the path will lead to more and more individuals who will have the answers to your questions. One of them will even tell you there's a job you'll be perfect for if you only apply. It will be a slow, uphill climb-but at the end will be your dream job. I haven't made it there yet but I'm sure It will be worth every ounce of effort. Thank the people giving you advice, write down their names and once you are hired, send them something they will enjoy.

          I will close this blog post with a word of warning to the aspiring writer/reporter/publishing house worker: Sometimes the stepping stones lead right back to where you started: on the other side of a big river. If this begins to happen its time to stop networking and start taking matters into your own hands. Best of luck guys.

On Perserverance

          

Turn down the background noise. Shut off all the lessons that you have learned, all of the hobbies that you have acquired through friends, shed away where you were, are, and will be.

                Just sit there for once, in original thought. If you are afraid let the fear wash over you, through you, and then drift away behind you. It is here, in this silence, when you truly are yourself, when you truly grow. Love or hate, anger or depression, you are feeling not because you should, but because you are.

                This is where you grow, and move along your own path in this life.