ADVICE FROM THE BOTTOM DRAWER
Gordon Aalborg ... filling in for Sharon Wheeler.
Advice, 'tis often said, usually is worth about what you pay for it.
Which means I am not charging enough. Or explains why nobody ever listens to Gordo.
New and aspiring authors, it is a known fact, thrive on advice. They seek it here, they seek it there, they seek the shortcuts everywhere. They collect advice, swap it around like baseball cards, analyze it, dissect it, translate it, bend and form it to suit - and usually, in the end, ignore it.
Because, I often think, following genuinely *good* advice is just too easy. It is simple, and our minds trick us into believing that if it sounds that simple, it cannot be true, cannot be real.
I give you, just an example, my oft-quoted *Advice From the Bottom Drawer* - which I dispense often, and for FREE, to those {surprisingly many} knowledge-seekers who have finished their first book and now want to know what to do with it.
1 MAKE SURE IT IS SPELL-CHECKED, PROOFED, AND PERFECT IN YOUR EYES. AS GOOD AS IT CAN BE!
2 PUT IT AWAY IN A BOTTOM DRAWER SOMEPLACE AND LEAVE IT THERE WHILE YOU WRITE YOUR *NEXT* BOOK, AND...
3 ONLY WHEN THE SECOND BOOK IS FINISHED AND PERFECT IN YOUR EYES IS IT TIME TO TAKE THAT FIRST BOOK OUT OF THE DRAWER, RE-READ IT, AND -- IF YOU HAVE ANY SENSE AT ALL -- REWRITE IT IN THE MANNER WHICH IT DEMANDS OF YOU. AS IT WILL, OR AT LEAST SHOULD.
4 THEN, AND ONLY THEN, SEND IT TO ME {WITH MONEY} AND I WILL TELL YOU WHY YOU NEED GLASSES, OR NEW GLASSES, OR A NEW EDITOR.
5 MEANWHILE, PLEASE LAUNCH INTO THE WRITING OF YOUR THIRD BOOK, BECAUSE YOUR SECOND BOOK MUST MATURE JUST LIKE THE FIRST ONE DID, AND THAT TAKES TIME!
I had occasion recently to evaluate a second novel from one of *my* authors, and was suitably impressed except for one aspect of the tale. So I sent her an email, asking that she give the ms a quick read-through -- "and when you're done, tell me please, briefly, how YOU feel about X as a person. Gut reaction, please, just your *feelings* - do you like her, feel sorry for her, hate her, commisserate with her, think she's a bit of a whinger, do you trust her, ...etc."
I made this request *knowing* she hadn't read this ms in quite a long time, and hoping she would see in her own work what I had seen, which was a less than sympathetic major character whom the reader was supposed to *like* - not loathe and despise and want murdered on the next page if not sooner.
As my author, not surprisingly, did - at least in part: "Especially in the first chapters, she makes such a big deal out of little things. I wanted to tell her to grow up and deal with life. I got impatient with her little nit-picking ways." And: "I felt like I was reading about a little teenage girl and not a grown woman."
The result, for my author, was a fair amount of work: "I wrote a new first chapter and drastically re-vamped the next three. X is infinitely more heroic, compassionate and courageous and far less of a whining pansy."
And a far better book, in the end! As it would have been, without my help, if my hapless author had only followed - in the first place - my advice from the bottom drawer.
What a splendid result! What splendid advice, come to think of it. And before you ask, Matilda, the answer is, "No. I do not follow my own advice. I don't have time and because, at that price, how good could it be?"
