On Giving Advice

August 4, 2005

My father has become somewhat of a legend in our family for his famous, oft-repeated proverbs, with lessons for handling almost any life crisis. My father on travel: "Best thing to do is stay home." My father on trying new things, "I've never been boiled in oil, but I wouldn't want to do that either." My father on hair stylings: "The longer the hair, the shorter the brains." And my father on giving advice: "Never give unsolicited advice. Either the person ignores you, or he follows your advice and it doesn't work out and then he calls you pisher." What about solicited advice? "Never give that either, for the same reasons."

My father might be horrified to learn that in the past year or so, I've been asked for advice on writing and publishing with surprising frequency for advice. Some of these petitioners are strangers who've contacted me through friends or the Internet. Others are friends or colleagues I didn't even know were writers. So far the requests have been steady, not quite a deluge, and I try as often as I can to say yes, yes, and yes. I know some writers find it bothersome to share what they've learned with aspiring up-and-comers, particularly at a time when it seems that more people are interested in writing books than buying them. (See my blog of June 5, 2005).

Yet it's crucially important that as we move up the ladder, to whatever small degree, we extend a hand down, across, or even up to our fellow-sufferers. An important part of being a writer is to give and get feedback with an audience more intimate than a book critic, more informal than a teacher, more generous than a classmate in a workshop, more idealistic than an editor or agent.

And yet, as I read and dispense stories of my limited experience with publishing, I often wonder what if anything I can provide that's of any use. I recently read an insightful essay by Lynn Freed in Harper's about the occupational hazards of creative writing, in which she confesses to feeling "like a fraud... I have just realized the novel on which I have been laboring for 18 months... is hopeless... Every sentence in it a lie. Who do I think I am... Balzac?"

I know what she means. I'm not like a manuscript doctor who can prescribe a cure for unfocused characters or a weak sense of plot. I'm not even sure I can diagnose an illness. I can only give my honest impression of what I read and why I responded to it in the way I did. But who's to say my impression is valuable? I can safely comment on rules of grammar and syntax, but creative writing cannot be said to have rules so much as techniques or tools. Each new story or play or poem presents its own specific and unique problem to be solved with whatever tools can get the job done. Once the writer has solved that problem, she then has to start from scratch again with each new work she attempts. (Or else churn out the same work over and over, which is not a solution either.)

Sometimes I get asked to read something that baffles me completely, not only in terms of what next steps should be taken, but also the artist's own intention. In these cases, I can only pose questions. Why did you choose these words? Who are these people you're writing about and what do they want? What does the experience of reading this provide to the world?

These are questions for the writer to answer, not me. Anyone thoughtful is as capable as I am of posing questions like these. Alternatively, these questions can be found in the growing number of books on the craft and business of creative writing that get published each year. Yet maybe advice isn't all that we as writers are seeking from each other. Maybe what we want isn't so much an answer as the experience of talking to and being heard by a peer, to get some reassurance that we're not alone. The human contact itself provides more comfort than any wise words.

The trouble is that in the creative process, we are alone. No one can show us a way out or give us a leg up. We have to find our way by ourselves. Even when trying to find an agent or an editor to buy a poem or a story, we have to do most of the grunt work on our own. No one else can make the inevitable process of rejection any easier. The false comfort of companionship lasts only so long before the same knotty problems of word choice and characterization stare us in the face. They demand our attention, which regrettably, can only be given in solitude.