Why “follow your heart” isn’t always the best writing advice… except when it is

Scrolling through Twitter one day this spring (yes, I know), I happened upon writing advice that went something like this: “When someone says [x] about your work, it doesn’t mean the work is bad; just that it’s not for them.” This statement was followed by the obligatory string of other people chiming in to agree. And I thought, Not necessarily.

Sometimes the work isn’t great. Sometimes it’s objectively bad.

But it’s a lot less snappy to load advice down with a bunch of caveats, hedging comments, and “for instance” clauses.

(Also, saying that creative work can be bad is a real downer, and nobody likes downers.)

The unsexy truth is, the two halves of the Twitter advice that I found aren’t mutually exclusive: the work can be bad AND not for a particular reader.

Which got me thinking about writing advice in general, and how inherently contradictory it often is.

Have you received this writing advice before?

The basic writing advice dichotomy, in my opinion, boils down to “follow your heart” versus “abide by the rules.”

Let’s play a game. For each one of these pieces of advice you’ve received, try and hold your breath for 30 seconds.

• Write from your heart.
• Write [this way] because your readers will expect it.
• You’ll find your tribe (aka audience) if you are authentic.
• Tailor your writing to a particular audience.
• Outline your book.
• Wing it.
• Creativity is beautiful, no matter how disordered.
• Make sure your work is coherent.

Out of breath yet?

I’m convinced most of us hold these conflicting beliefs in mind simultaneously. Can these contradictory nuggets of writing advice all be true at the same time?

In my experience, we can alleviate much of our confusion and frustration if we remember that, as I’ve ranted before, writing advice is not a one-size-fits-all.

Go wild and crazy and ALSO write a score like Mozart

What I see happening in our breathless list, above, is a lack of awareness of what stage of the writing process someone is in. Specifically, a failure to consider the distinction between first and later drafts.

Anyone who has ever gotten far enough to revise something, and also to start another, completely unrelated writing project, can recognize this distinction.

There is a lot to be said for both creativity and order. For structure and wild play. We need them both. They just typically can’t happen at the same (writing) time.

Wild play is for first drafts. Order is for second/later drafts.

Heart space is for first drafts. The intellect makes sense of second/later drafts.

The more experience we get in writing, the more we close the gap between these two. But always, when you see advice advocating for untrammeled imagination, you know you are looking at first-draft advice.

Bottom Line

Take any advice as an invitation: to think about your work and what you want to do with it.

Maybe this is the purpose of bold, definitive statements: to capture our attention, so that we can dig deeper into what that advice truly means and how we can apply it.

Doing so will only help you as you move onto other, later drafts.

I’ll see you writing…

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Are you up to your eyeballs in conflicting writing advice? A book structure intensive can get you on the right track.

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