Roach! Do you or your pals have any tips on giving advice and encouragement to new (bad) writers? A friend of mine just got serious about picking up writing for real with his first star wars fic and I wanna cheer him on, but I can't just tell him his stuff's great because it's... not. and i'm a bad liar. He has asked for advice and I'm willing to give it, but I'm not sure how to do it without smothering his enthusiasm. I'm deathly self-critical so I don't really trust my instincts here.
if you’re too self-critical and uncertain to want to give people criticism, you should tell them so! just let him know that you’d rather he has fun with writing and learning to improve at his own pace, than to potentially drag you into a tricky emotional situation that could end up hurting you both. that’s just stressful, no thanks.
like, i remember demanding critique from trusted friends and then getting my feelings hurt when they did what i thought they wanted, and then feeling really stupid about it. so now i think that probably friends shouldn’t critique each other’s work unless they’re both cool with it, which is really sounds like you’re not. so, don’t. tell him it’s too stressful for you and you don’t want to. he should respect that. if he doesn’t, that’s a whole other problem you two have going on.
like, my best advice to new writers is just, write a lot, read a lot, and if you do seek out advice, listen to the kind of simple mechanical advice that tells you like, ‘this is how you format a paragraph, this is where you put punctuation’ rather than the more high-concept nebulous advice that goes like ‘this is how to structure a plot’ or ‘these are my opinions on dialogue’. then just write the stories you like to read– even if you don’t do it well, by whatever standard of wellness is going on, you’re still going to enjoy yourself, and i think that as long as you’re playing, you’re learning. as long as you’re happy and engaged in your work, it’s good for you to be doing it– better than if you were stressed out and self-concious and unhappy. like yeah maybe people can improve faster if they’re stressed out about not being good enough, but jeez, i don’t think it’s worth it, especially not in a creative field.
my other advice to writers about writing is, the kind of people who give the most SERIOUS advice about how SERIOUS writing is, are the people you should listen to the least, because anyone who takes themselves and their work super seriously is at least somewhat of a pretentious dick. and being like those kinds of people is just not worth it.
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