🍸 lisa writes stuff issue #32 🍷 If you want to learn how to write, just write

I’ve taken those classes so you don’t have to

Mar 20, 2024

Dear Internet,

I haven’t written much in Alex’s story this week as I’ve been brainstorming on my cozy mystery. I have a few reference books on writing mysteries so I grabbed them hoping to get a concrete idea on building up the villain.

Mr. Lisa has said in the past I’m more into the research of a thing then doing the thing and he’s not wrong. When I came up with the idea of an Edwardian mystery series about a decade ago, I bought all kinds of reference books and spent a fuck ton of time on researching the era.

The books? Never cracked them open.

Now, with another mystery taking shape in my brain, I finally opened the reference books and…found their advice is too old.

The books were published in the early naughts and while some writing advice stays around forever, lots of what the books were recommending were no longer in vogue or relevant to the contemporary writer. Granted the books were a decade old when I bought them a decade ago, but still. I was hoping for some kind of writerly revelation.

(n.b. One of the books recommended keeping an electric pencil sharpener next to your computer for reasons and they were not being facetious.)

The books are the beginning of the pile of books I am selling to Half-Price Books.

In the over three decades of interneting, one thing that is always available, and 99% for free, is advice. Good or bad, it’s there.

Writing advice comes in forms of webinars, email lists, communities, and Facebook groups to name a few places. For a long time, I was signing up for those webinars, email lists, communities, and Facebook groups to learn more on the craft of writing. And it’s not just on the craft but also on how to sell and promote your books.

I was fucking overwhelmed.

I’m still overwhelmed.

See, the thing is, it all boils down to just write. That’s it. Read your genres to get a feel for the tempo and structure but ultimately, just write. This may seem fucking obvious but so many of us resist it. Surely there is a magic formula or way to do this. I can tell you after years of buying into this bullshit, there is not.

After decades of getting suckered into joining groups, signing up for webinars and emails lists, and joining communities, I said “fuck it,” and took myself off of everything.

What I realized is that not only were those places not great, they were also, in many ways, scams.

Lately, I’ve become a big proponent of signing up for free webinars on various topics for not only my career but also personal interests and a lot of them are writing based. Several gurus I follow offer up free webinars on how to do X and then spend 20 – 30 minutes at the end of X to shill their products / classes / books to further increase your knowledge on that topic. Ages ago, I fell into this trap and bought the product / classes / books but never utilized them. Eventually, I realized, I don’t need the products / classes / books because I have zero track record of using these things and what I needed about that topic was I sucked into I got from the free webinars / books or the internet itself.

This is not to say that these creators shouldn’t get paid for their work, they absolutely should, but what they sell is not just their work on these products / classes / books but the idea that if want to be successful, you should follow their lead and you can make your dreams a reality.

For one salesperson, I started tracking down his recommendations from clients to see how their books were faring and the outlook was not good in that in what these salespeople were selling, didn’t add up to the reality of what was being bought or produced by the authors who bought from him.

I am not fond of the high pressure sales tactics and the “priced at X but I’m giving it to you for the low, low price of Y.” I got suckered into such a thing in the past where I bought a class and an add on because I wanted to get deeper into the product and the add on seemed like a good investment. And honestly, I don’t regret this purchase. But what I found interesting was when I was watching another webinar by this salesperson, they offered the add-on for $250 MORE than what I bought and I paid like $50. They also did the breakdown of you’re getting THIS for $X when it’s really worth $Y. I really liked this salesperson because I believed in their products but when I saw that pitch, I got angry for the people buying his wares.

(Steph and I talked about this topic in relation to other “salespeople” on the internet and I may write about it on the regular newsletter.)

I don’t think there is anything wrong on wanting to learn about something, I’m all for self-improvement and self-learning. But I found, with me, that I was less about doing the work and more looking for shortcuts. In the several decades it has been since I started taking novel writing seriously, I accomplished almost nothing in terms of work and have a fuck ton of material in relation to the craft of which after skimming through it once, I never look at it again. It's detritus on my hard drive and bookshelves.

I’ve decided to donate most of my reference books since what I need is easily available on the internet in some form or fashion and I’m keeping my credit card close and not buying any more products. I don’t need them.

And neither do you.

Just fucking write.

A Most Unreliable Narrator

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