First, Do Not Suck: A Video Presentation on Which Writing Advice to Take (and Which Not To) for Subscribers

Hello gang, it’s the first video content in a long time. While I know advice for writing is something of a niche interest among my readers, a passionate minority of you have repeatedly asked that I do a little more pedagogical work for writers, and that’s also been a long time in coming. What follows is an adapted presentation I did for the Tucson Festival of Books on why most writing advice is useless for most writers - and what kind is actually much more valuable. In the hour-ish long presentation below the paywall, I talk about

• The difference between writing advice and writing response

• The static lists of writing advice that float around on the internet and why they so often do more harm than good

• Why pronouns and the passive voice are both actually good and necessary tools for any writers, along with a few other defenses of reviled constructions

• The essential recursive processes that make writers better

• Breaking down a couple brief pieces of prose to show how they changed in an editing process and why the revised versions are better

• Why it’s so hard to get an audience or make any money doing this even when you can tell you’re getting better

I had fun doing this and I think there’s a number of you who would find this presentation practical and useful. Hope you enjoy it, and if you aren’t subscribed, you know what to do.