November 15, 2005
You may notice that at the top of this blog page are links to a few of my friends' blogs. Joe Konrath, Eric Mayer, Lee Goldberg, Paul Guyot, PJ Parrish, et al. These are blogs I check regularly--probably too regularly. They all offer something, some philosophical or practical musings about the writing life. Things like how to write sex scenes, how to break in as a writer, how to promote your work, how to write for TV, as well as more internal musings about the writing life and creativity.

They're wonderful reads, great people, terrific writers and--just like YOURS TRULY--sometimes wrong.

Am I picking on anybody here?

Nope. Not one bit. A while back I mentioned Michael Crichton saying how he didn't give advice because everybody's trip to breaking in was different. I note with some mild amusement that Lee Goldberg says pretty much the same thing on his blog today. And God knows I don't think my particular journey was typical or even recommended. And although Lee talks about different approaches--and I haven't read all of today's entry yet--it doesn't look like he talks about his own journey, or perhaps he does.

There are good, useful things you can pick up in all of our blogs about how to write and how to promote and how to break in with your magazine articles, novels, TV and theatrical scripts. Perhaps they will help you get wherever it is you dream of getting. Perhaps they won't. There are certainly no guarantees in any aspect of this business. I've been reading Writers Digest for about 16 years and I sometimes think they should print under their title either: "WHERE SHIT HAPPENS" or "SOMETIMES WE'RE WRONG."

Ultimately, I think it's useful to keep in mind that what we're writing about is our own experiences, which are unique. Advice tends to be only worth the fortune cookie it comes in. I don't, for instance, think all of Joe Konrath's advice on promotion would work well for me, although much of it does. Hopefully you as a reader don't take everything I say as being written in stone, either. Healthy skepticism is a useful skill for a writer--whether its listening to a company PR person tell you how great they are, or listening to your agent tell you they're sure they can sell your novel for a billion bucks (or that your current work sucks) or when an editor says "the check's in the mail," or the TV producer says "I'm reading it right now and we're talking prime time, baby."

Let the blog-reader beware.

Best,
Mark Terry