Friday, July 17, 2009

Writing Know-It-Alls

In thinking of a topic for this post. There are many things I could write about but considering a few people that I've dealt with online I decided to post on people who give advice. This might seem a little weird since this blog could be seen as writing advice but what I am talking about is the people who have a bad attitude when giving advice.

Example: The topic was publishing word counts. Someone was talking about how many words they had so far and the amount they wanted to add. Another person chimed in with how they wanted 50,000 words as their novel. I added the information I'd heard from "I Should Be Writing" on the desired word count range for first time authors. Someone else came in and started spouting off what they called advice. That would have been fine if they hadn't acted like their word was the only right one and refused to listen to the conversation of anyone else.

That really got me thinking. I like getting writing advice and if someone asks a question that I've come upon in my research then I help them out if I can. I'm not published and don't claim to be an expert but I do have years of research behind me. I don't appreciate people who act like they know it all. The truth is, they are not always right. What they need to consider is their tone of delivery. Even though this is all done over the internet there is a big difference between being helpful and being snobby.

I hope I am helpful and will do my best to remain that way.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

AMEN, Dawny!! *applauds*