There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965)

Heh. I just stumbled across this on another site, and thought it was strangely pertinent.

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I may do up some ACID files that I could rip and post. Mebbe. If I'm brave.

Do it! Do it! I'm so curious.

I wrote a lyric the other night that will make no sense to anybody but me and a few of my friends. but i'm really loving it. I haven't written anything new in a while.

I'm thinking of getting a friend to translate into spanish and then I'll sing it once in English and once in Spanish. In the great tradition of the Clash and the Pogues -- singers who (I'm pretty sure) don't actually speak Spanish singing in it. (I did take in HS and have pretty good ideas of how things should be pronounced though.)

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Those lyrics make me extremely happy right now. I'm still waiting for Nic to find the time to upload the Saturday Sessions tape with Ghosts on it up to the computer, and then down onto CD.

Really, look on writing books as your minions--they are there for you to use for your own purposes and only if you want to. If not, ignore them.

I totally agree with that in principle, but there's a problem, Robin, and it's the same one I find with "so, you're a new parent? Here's a book alllllll about parenting!" Basically, someone who is new at it, or unsure about it, and vulnerable, is going to believe every single damned word on some level, because there's nothing to tell them how to separate the wheat from the chaff. Most people don't possess that skill or talent, on either the intellectual or the visceral level - that's why they're reading the books in the first place, usually.

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someone who is new at it, or unsure about it

Where would you recommend this person go instead? Someone with a sound head on their shoulders but no actual experience needs to know what's out there, and can reap value, I suspect.

I don't use how-to writing books, but have a complete addiction to art and photography technique books. It never occured to me to take any one of them as gospel, no matter how loud they were about it.

And I was new and unsure at art and photography myself -- that wasn't the issue. I don't believe any book 100% just on principle.

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Where would you recommend this person go instead? Someone with a sound head on their shoulders but no actual experience needs to know what's out there, and can reap value, I suspect

In the case of parents, that's what support groups are for. Rather than a perfect baby in the whatfrickinever percentile of perfect babies on a page, they can (I did) see that Marianna's infant son Dominic is colicky and miserable for an hour after feeding; her doctor suggested blahblah. Look at others around you, where you can observe and see. I inifinitely prefer a group of writers discussing their own experience, just as I preferred a group of parents, dealing with the same shite I was.

It never occured to me to take any one of them as gospel, no matter how loud they were about it.

No, nor would I. But I remember a new mother in hospital when Jo was a few days old, whose "new mother instructional guide" was very fierce on the subject of how No Real Mother Would Bottlefeed Her Baby.

The child was severely malnourished - she didn't dare switch to a bottle. The kid was literally dying of starvation.

You do possess the talent. A lot of people don't, or even if they know some of the advice is purely subjective, doing nothing but reading the damned books won't give them the perception meters.

edited for typing. My house is buried under Russian workmen and sawdust. I'm at Kinko's.

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In the case of parents, that's what support groups are for.

Oh dear, no. At least not a lot of times. Other people are much stupider than I am. I am being honest, here. You wouldn't believe the things people do to/recommend for sick newborns. No, no, at least not as an analogy here. The parents in the parents group? Maybe no better than any asshole's published manifesto on anything, but sometimes actually deadly. I saw people on live journal telling a woman to give her week old baby laxitives. I know people who gave toddler sized doses of Infant Tylenol to toddlers, not realizing the Infants is at a much higher concentration. Own sister-in-law (who isn't usually stupid) didn't know you had to refrigerate formula after you mixed it, because someone else she knew left the bottles on the counter, and niece became ill. No. No. No. No. No.

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Cindy, I'm not suggesting you take their advice. I'm suggesting you observe them.

If a frazzled, exhausted new mother is willing to read a total stranger with a hair up their ass about breastfeeding, and be expected to figure out which parts of the advice in the book are good and which are the writer jerking off on her Very Spceial Podium, why shouldn't she be expected to look at six or seven other real live breathing frazzled exhausted new mothers, and their real live babies, and do some informed separating from the living examples?

Why is the page written by the stranger, who has never seen my child, supposed to be so much more useful, or worthy?

edit: and looking at a couple of examples confirms me in that opinion. If the mother who hasn't refrigerated the formula (why are people who don't or won't read labels on food breeding? A whole other issue) is rushing her infant to the hospital with invasive salmonella, there's a pretty vivid example of What Not To Do right there.

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Why is the page written by the stranger, who has never seen my child, supposed to be so much more useful, or worthy?

It might not be more worthy, but it could be valuable to some degree, no? I mean, for instance, Penelope Leach has never met my kids (and I've never met her) but everything she's ever written about child care has struck me as sensible and honest. I like her book Your Baby and Child for the sick-baby stuff and some observations on eating and behavior, and I've turned back to it with each child because all three of mine have been very different little people.

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Amy, definitely. But there are a shitload of baby books out there and where, after all, did you find out about Penelope Leach? (I've heard the term sensible about her a lot, BTW - she sounds excellent.)

I mean, did you stumble across her by accident, or was she recced to you by a living breathing human being?

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What AmyLiz said. In my case, it's Dr. Spock and I don't take everything he ever wrote as gospel, or even always sensible, but medically speaking (when to call the doctor) he knows what he's talking about, where random mom at playgroup is no more likely than I am, to have a clue, and probably actually less likely than I am, to have that same clue.

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