When Good Advice Goes Bad (part three)

Part of the problem with having a blog is that people read it. So I’m on the phone with my editor yesterday, arguing about a bit of pretty I want to keep in my book, when she takes this “quote” voice with me and says, “Kill your darlings, Diana.” Curses! This is what I get for trying to help people. ::blows raspberry at Kerri, who is out there, lurking:: But seriously, she’s…right. Very smart girl, that Kerri. Dammit.

So, this one’s a bit of a cheat. But it’s Friday, and I’m wiped.

WHEN GOOD ADVICE GOES BAD:

WRITE THE BOOK OF YOUR HEART

Who hasn’t heard this line at a writing workshop? Who hasn’t read it in an essay? Write the Book of Your Heart. A few years ago, I remember reading a post by one frustrated writer who said she was so sick of hearing this particular phrase, and that the book of her heart was The Sun Also Rises* and it had already been written.

Um, talk about taking something to the literal extreme! If I were going to (mis)interpret it that way, I think I’d have a hard time nailing down my choice. Too many books live in my heart. That’s never what “the book of your heart” was supposed to mean.

Actually the way most people interpret it is also not how it was meant to be taken, either. (This is where the cheat comes in). But there’s nothing I can say about this matter that hasn’t already been exquisitely covered by Julie Leto in her extraordinary essay:

Ditching “The Book of Your Heart” for “A Book of Your Voice”

It’s one of the best pieces of writing advice I’ve ever received. No really. Go read it. I’ll wait.

Done? Okay, on we go. As you might have guessed, I love this essay. It cuts through all the artisitc, self-indulgent bullshit we like to tell ourselves and gets to the meat of the matter: how do we, as commercial artists, keep our integrity and pay the rent? It blows the faulty dichotomy of “book of your heart” vs. “book of your wallet” right out of the water. It tells you that yes, you can write books that you love that are also marketable. (And now all you people who didn’t read it the first time, go back and click on that link.)

Okay, off to kill some darlings. The book of my voice needs it.

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*Or something. I can’t remember which classic piece of literature she referenced. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, maybe? Something. Doesn’t matter.