Shots in the Dark

Part of the point of this blog is to give advice to other writers. In doing this, I have gained an understanding in the difficulties of giving advice to strangers I may never meet. Such difficulties seem obvious when I put it that way, but when I was a mere student, reading books of advice on writing, it seemed so strange how pointless they seemed to me. Now I know why they were.

My advice pretty much amounts to avoiding my mistakes, seeing my observations, and learning my beliefs and techniques. I don't really consider this giving advice so much as reading my diary (which, as we all know, is what blogs were in the first place). Reading a writer's diary may provide some useful information, but it may be completely useless if you are significantly different from the writer.

To me, advice is tailor-made. If I am working with another writer, I will learn that person's style, habit, and problems. When I give advice to that person, it will always be relevant. Giving irrelevant advice is a waste of breath.

However, this is not to say that all general advice is bad. If some person was reading this blog and found 99% of it to be completely irrelevant and useless, then there would still be three or four posts that would be worthwhile. In that particular case, it may not be worth trudging through that many lousy posts to find a diamond, but I doubt most people are in that position. The point is that, because my advice is not tailored to any specific person with specific problems, all of my posts are just shots in the dark. Some may talk about something that has been problematic all your life, some may talk about something you are so good at that you can't believe anybody would ever have a problem with it.

If you are reading somebody's general writing advice, take it with a grain of salt. You're reading somebody's diary. If they help you, great. If they don't help, no big deal. They weren't specifically trying to help you in the first place.