Writers are constantly being asked by would-be authors for advice, and especially for critiques. I'm not sure I entirely get this, as it never occurred to me to ask writers for advice when I was starting out, but it's very common indeed. And the worst thing you can do is to actually provide advice and critiques, because that encourages them -- the more requests you respond to, the more you'll get. It's a bottomless time sink.
I did something that at first glance would seem to be really stupid: I actually put writing advice on my webpage. It doesn't seem to have done any great harm, though -- I get requests for advice, but no more than before I put those pages up. Maybe they figure I've posted everything I have to say.
What sort of advice one is asked for seems to depend on what one is known for. I created another identity back in the 1990s that I used for writing novelizations and spin-offs -- Star Trek novels, a Spider-Man novel, etc. I got requests for advice under that name, same as under the Watt-Evans name, but they were all basically, "How can I get an agent so Paramount/Marvel/Fox/whoever will read my fanfic and buy it?"
In fact, more than half the "fan mail" I ever got under that name boiled down to, "How can I get an agent?" Sometimes they dressed it up with a little flattery; sometimes they didn't bother. And they never asked about how they could make their writing better, or anything -- only about finding an agent because Paramount/Marvel/Fox/etc. didn't read unagented submissions.
Why did they think I would help them find agents?
This all came to mind today because I got e-mail from some kid in England who wanted my advice on whether he should try to become a writer. He sent a chunk of prose to help me decide.
That was the most godawfully overwritten piece I'd seen in many a year, jammed with sesquipedalian words that didn't say quite what their author seemed to want them to say. It wasn't so much a story fragment as an attempt to over-awe the reader with vocabulary, a verbal peacock's tail.
I answered, probably more bluntly than the kid expected -- but thinking about it, why did I bother? He's not going to be grateful. I didn't owe him an answer; he e-mailed me that tripe without warning or invitation. My response was honest, which means it was almost certainly not what he wanted to hear.
One thing I didn't say, though, was that his display of false erudition was utterly typical of a certain sort of beginning writer, the sort who is much more interested in impressing everyone with his brilliance than with actually telling a story or communicating with his readers. You could just feel it -- "Look how many fancy words I know! Isn't my vocabulary amazing? See how smart I am, using words like 'oscillate' and 'perambulate'?"
And I didn't say that partly because it would just make him defensive, but also because if I had, I'd be tempted to admit I went through that phase myself when I was a beginner. Oh, I never had it as bad as he does, but I looked for opportunities to show off all the fine words I had at my command. I took pride in using the word "feculent" in my first novel, for example, and that was when I was well on the road to recovery, about four years after my worst pseudo-Lovecraftian period.
I probably shouldn't have responded at all. Most people just get angry or depressed when I give my honest assessment of their writing.
But then, every so often someone actually listens to my advice. At Free Comic Book Day I ran into someone who said I looked familiar, though I didn't recognize him, and who turned out to be someone who'd asked me for advice back in 2004. He had a connection to the family, so I'd provided a few comments on his writing, and then thought nothing further of it.
His first novel is being published this October.
I can't really take credit for it, because most of what I did was just suggest other places to look for guidance, but apparently he followed my suggestions and got some good out of them.
Sometimes it actually works.
But usually, it's a waste of time.
The thing is... well, in advertising, they say that everyone knows 90% of all advertising is a complete waste of money. The thing is, nobody knows which 90% is a waste, and which is the 10% that'll make you rich.
And I never know which bit of advice will do some good.
But I'll bet today's won't.