 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to From the Desk. Today we are talking about the worst writing advice I have ever received. This has been from publishers, other writers, editors, all that. I'm also going to go over something here at the end that meant quite a bit to me and it's something recent that has helped with my own perception of creativity. So first off we're going to get through this list really quickly. The number five spot, yeah sorry I'm kind of stuck in this top five Friday kind of thing even though it's not Friday, number five spot goes to do not cuss or curse or use foul language in the narrative. Don't use damn, don't use fuck, don't use shit, don't use any of those things. Some of my favorite literature has that kind of stuff in the narrative. The thing is you can do it, you just have to know you're going to get the people who think, who traditionally believe that just because you curse means you have a low vocabulary, which I find is hilarious. You use cussing or foul language, I don't like calling it foul language. I mean words are words. You can call a grown man Beatrice and get the same reaction out of him as if you called him a bitch. I think it all comes down to context and whether or not that word is a curse or not, that's fucking cool. Or I can say you're a fucking moron and this video just got demonetized 18 times. But anyways I don't subscribe to that and I've heard several people in their reviews commend me for my down to earth storytelling and usually what that relates to is the language that I use. It's like I hope that the books come off as me telling a story to them, me kind of talking to them. And if you know me on social media, not YouTube because I don't do it much, but I'm a very cussy sort of individual. I like words with punch and those words punch. Especially people who you know fawn at the you know faint at the sight of or the with any earshot of a foul language. I find that funny because words are just words. It's the context in which you use those words whether or not they are curses or foul language. Number four, never killed children and animals. I don't kill animals on screen because I think it's a lazy man's tactic to shock people. All too often that you know they'll describe like intricate dice section of a kitty cat or whatever. I just don't do it because I don't find it shocking or terribly interesting. I have done it off camera in two of my books. A dog dies off camera in basin. A cat dies off camera. You see the aftermath or hear about the aftermath of both. As far as never killed children, I'm pretty sure I've killed almost every single kid that I have written about up to this point. But if you want to consider that a spoiler is whatever, I can tell you right now most of the people in my book die. Every now and again someone will survive and I think that's the surprise. Nowadays is not who will die. It's who's going to actually survive at the end of my books. If you're going to write horror or even thrillers, the easiest way to upset someone is to kill an animal or a child. I think an animal is way too easy. Killing a child depending on how you do it. I wouldn't go into too much detail but that's just me. I do go into a lot of detail in bedding of boys, but I do a lot of things in the bedding of boys that I don't suggest anybody else do. And the point of that is like this stuff is supposed to bother you. These things, these images, these actions of these characters are supposed to upset you. They're supposed to disgust you. That isn't really a horror novel as much as it's a novel that is meant to make you angry. And I love the one star reviews of that. There's one on Amazon right now from somebody named Cynthia I think it is. She has, oh it's the most brilliant, this is the most brilliant one star review I've ever had. But she got really really angry and said it wasn't scary. She was disgusted and all that. That's what I was looking for. I want more reactions like that. So and my point of view is if you can upset one person or if you can get one person to see the point of your book, you've done it. You've hit your goal because not everybody's going to understand the books that you write and not everybody should and it's not even their fault whether or not they understand it or not. Sometimes it is the execution that makes it hard to understand. But if one person can figure it out then you've done your job. Number three, only writing the POV you're most comfortable with. I got this early on in my career I got this piece of advice from an editor who said that I was really good at first person narrative. Ever since that piece of advice I have not written anything but short stories in first person narrative because obviously I'm way too comfortable in first person narrative. And for those of you going what about No Home for Boys? I wrote that book years ago. That book's been done. I just now it's going to be published in June of 2019. If you're watching this after the fact then and your reading is like you had one recently that book was written ages ago. But I specifically wrote that in first person just to kind of you know grind this this person's gears. Well now I specifically wrote everything else in third person and then I got really good at writing in third person but I specifically did that just to grind this person's gears like look I can do this well too. Unfortunately our relationship ended soon after that so well actually fortunately for me anyways the relationship ended very quickly after that and I moved on. But I need to get back to doing first person and other POVs because that person affected my writing anyways without me even realizing it. But if anybody says hey you're really good at this one thing I suggest highly to try other things because you've already got that down. If so many people love you writing in first person branch out and do something else. Okay next up number two finish one project before moving on to the next. I really don't agree with this. Stephen even Stephen King says this he says if you stop you're going to lose the motivation you're going to lose the momentum and all that stuff and that could be true. But there is something also to be said about fighting for that motivation fighting to get that motivation back. But if you're stuck there's no use in just sitting around doing nothing you move on to the next task. Another thing is that these suggestions might actually work for you but these personally are the worst suggestions or pieces of advice I ever got. But I am big on continuously writing getting out and doing routine every single day people always ask me hang on how many words do you write a day? I don't really write that many words a day but I write every single day. And even if that's 300 words a day which it's not it's usually a lot more than that. But even at 300 words a day you'd have a novel by the end of the year. And that's what most writers do only one novel a year. Most. There's people who do you know six novels a year. There's people who do one novel every seven years. You know like Thomas Harris or Donna Tartt you know they don't like writing quickly. And last on this list is do not receive do not review other authors negatively. Now this is a big one okay. If we are not critical of our peers who is going to be critical of them? Because you hear it all the time it's not true by the way but you hear it all the time when reviewers go oh this book was terrible and then authors or creative people go yeah but what have you created? Usually the only people that other creative people listen to are other creatives. So we can try and help out the other creatives. Are is it a matter of people in glass houses do not throw stones? Kind of to a point. Do I make errors in my writing? Certainly. Do they get out into the world? Certainly. But when they when those problems are brought up I feel embarrassed and I go and I fix them. If your reaction to peer criticism is to go this person is just being a hater then I'm gonna call you on your bullshit and I've done that a lot recently. And even recently there was a thing that there was a missing letter in someone's in someone's book and I gave them shit for it and then I come out and I had a missing letter on the cover of one of my books. Now it's the way you react to these situations that shows what type of individual you are. But if you just laugh it off or if you toss someone under the bus these are your mistakes and you have to own up to them. I made the mistake. I asked the publisher if we could fix it. He said he could. We fixed it. We're even throwing a little extra at people whereas this other authors whatever their publisher laughed it off didn't do anything to fix the people who got the error in in paper. And then the authors through the publisher on the bus saying it was the author's fault. And at the end of the day I mean it's it's the author's fault. If the error was there it's the author's fault. But finally I'm going to read. So yes I say review your peers. You are going to get respect from the ones that matter and you are going to get the and you're gonna get hate from those that don't matter. That's what I would say because I reviewed Gregor Zane that's how we met. I gave him a critical three star review of his book Six Dead Spots and he emailed me and we've been friends ever since. And he said something about this is when he read it this is a guy who gets it I think is what he said. And it's all about making each other better. It has nothing to do with breaking people down or destroying them publicly. It has to do with you know we want the best for the community possible. And the only way we're going to get that is if we are critical of each other. So finally I'm going to end on this note. This is from The New Yorker. I cut this out a long time ago. If you ever feeling down or discouraged I suggest looking up this review of It. The Movie It. Only if you're a fan of the movie. I love the movie. I think it's one of the best movies of last year or the year before. Year before. I think yeah. But it's a terrific film. This is from The New Yorker. A bunch of pompous windbags. I cut this out of a free copy that I found at a library that they had and it said and it was literally in their giveaway magazines. It. The reviewer RB says this lively but methodical adaptation of the novel by Stephen King offers a batch of skillful teen actors a place in the spotlight and gives Bill Skarsgard an antique and campy turn as the monstrous Pennywise the Dancing Clown who appears every 27 years to kidnap children from the town of Derry, Maine. The action starts in 1988 when young Georgie Denbro floating a paper boat in the street during a rainstorm is pulled into the sewer by the clown and never seen again. The following summer as more children disappear Georgie's brother Bill gathers his three nerdy friends who are soon joined by three more outcast kids and leads them on an expedition to confront the clown in an ancient abandoned house that they have linked to the disappearances. Although some situations including the sexual abuse of Beverly Marsh and the racist persecutions of Mike Hanlon are tense and suspenseful the characters are one-dimensional and any Muschietti's relentlessly perky direction doesn't help. The movie is not terrifying but blandly edifying its scares foreshadowed as if by telegram are delivered less effectively than its life lessons. This is one of the best films I've ever seen. I'm gonna throw that out there as far as the scares the tension the characters the emotion everything on screen it's a terrific film it's an even better adaptation of the source material. My point for reading that is no matter how good you do no matter how much love and passion because you know this movie was a trial of passion for this director no matter how much you love something there's always going to be somebody who hates it. The only thing you can do is accept the criticism and move on or dig through the criticism to try and find the positive in the negative. Any good reviewer is going to try and find that if it is there to be found but until next time I have been E, you have been U, it's been from the desk. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye bye!