If I Write a Book: Your Feedback

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About five years ago, I revised a new edition of the Beginning
Writer's Answer Book for Writer's Digest, which is in Q&A format.



A lot has changed since then.




Obviously the industry is transforming, but also my beliefs about writers and writing
have changed. (See here for my post about the
dirty secret about writing advice.)



Many writers have asked me to do another book, on about every topic imaginable. Every
time I consider it, I keep coming back to the same belief.

Most advice books—the types I think could be successful in the marketplace—ultimately
must push aside complexity and dilemma.

I don't mean to say that writers can't improve or be instructed by advice
books. Or that a writing life is something terrible and difficult.



But more and more writing advice can confuse or block people, rather than help them.
There's always conflicting advice to be found! Some writers have to (or SHOULD)
ignore advice, and do their own thing.



More writers need to learn how to think for themselves about these issues, to see
the nuance, to recognize the paradoxes they will inevitably encounter, and to filter
through what advice exists to find what is personally useful—as well as realize when or how the
information can be useful or applied, because timing can be everything.



Prescriptive methods and/or encouragements
work only some of the time, for some writers—they never work for all. The writing
itself never gets any easier, no matter how much you know or publish. The dilemmas
never go away.



But the kind of book I would like to write—or that I think writers need—doesn't offer
foolproof methods, or surefire plans. And, as such, it's probably not so marketable.

 

So what do you think? What kind of book would you like to see?

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