Welcome Elisabeth! Fellow Bradford-Buncher, fabulous writer, and all around great gal! It’s lovely to have you here!
The Dreaded Know-It-All
Things to Remember On Loops, When Blogging, and, Especially, In Person
Thanks to Marissa for letting me guest-blog for her today. It’s fun to be with the Bradford Bunch!
When I first started writing, I was a loop junkie. At the time, blogs were new and I, admittedly, didn’t know much about them. Writer’s loops were where I went to converse with other writers, to ask questions and to search for answers. Even though I was fairly green, it didn’t take long for me to pick out the bad apples in the group. You know the ones I’m talking about, those writers who know all there is to know about writing and publishing, the ones who are more than eager to pass on their oh-so valuable information, the ones who, somehow, are always online and, surprisingly, most of us have never heard of before.
I call it diarrhea of the mouth. We all know people like this outside the publishing industry: The uncle who still calls us by our childhood nickname and thinks it’s hilarious to retell the story of the time we peed our pants in public when we sat on Santa’s lap. The coworker we stupidly let read one of our earliest manuscripts who now blabs to everyone she meets about the porn we write. The neighbor who has the perfect yard and feels it’s his duty to instruct us on what we’re doing wrong with our grass each and every time we step out our front door. Lindsay Lohan’s character in Mean Girls (which I just rewatched this past weekend) called it Word Vomit. When things just spill out of our mouths without our brains keying in to what we’re saying. Honestly, we’re all guilty of it at one time or another, but when does it cross over from simply having an occasional episode of diarrhea of the mouth to turning into a full blown know-it-all?
Trust me when I say, you don’t want to be known as the Know-It-All of the writer’s world. I can name several writers from my early days on the loops who clearly came across as know-it-alls. Do I buy their books now? No way. And I tell my friends not to buy their books either. It wasn’t so much what they said but how they said it. In the way they argued their point like they were the supreme being of writing and selling. They may be the best writer in the world, but with an attitude like that, I don’t want to read any of their work. The question that stayed with me after an episode like this was always, what makes them think they’re experts anyway? At what point in publishing do you become an expert? After your first sale? After your fifth? How about once you hit that 35th book mark? When you hit the USA Today list? When you hit the NYT Bestseller list? What if you make it there but never hit another list again?
I have a very dear writer friend who is working on her 36th published book. What I love most about her isn’t her unending wisdom – though I do love that – but the fact that even after thirty-six books, she still doesn’t know it all. She has the same fears I do – will I sell this book? Will anyone want to read it? Will it progress my career or slow it? Am I a good writer? Each book is a challenge for her, and though she will answer any question posed to her and loves to talk about writing in general, she has never once come across as someone who has all the answers, even though I know she has a majority of them floating around inside that head of hers. Likewise, at the first RWA Conference I attended, I sat in on Nora Roberts’s chat, and a writer in the audience asked her, “How are you able to write such great books that hit the NYT list over and over? What’s your secret?” Nora, who I think we can all agree probably knows more about this industry than any of us, looked at this woman and said, “I don’t know. I just write.”
When you are blogging, on loops, and especially, talking with other writers in person, be mindful of what you say and how you say it. Writers have long memories. We know when you’re spewing word vomit and we know when you’re being genuine. This business is fickle, and the writers who are on top today could easily slide to the bottom tomorrow. You never know who’s listening to your diarrhea of the mouth, be they publishers, agents or the next Nora Roberts. The writers who are honest and helpful and who are truly trying to bolster other writers instead of simply promoting themselves are the ones we will continue to buy from and talk up to all our friends. And really, isn’t that our ultimate goal as writers? To have as many people as possible read and buy our books?
I think so. I hope so. Because from my view point, there isn’t a single advantage to being the one person in the world who thinks she knows everything there is to know about writing and publishing.
Have you ever had a run-in with a know-it-all writer, and if so, how did you handle it?
