Unsolicited advice!  It’s everybody’s favorite!

“You know, dear, you should get married.  Find a nice man at church.   You’re not getting any younger, you know.” I know.  Shut the hell up.

“Move to Alaska!  It’s so quiet and there are lots of guys!” Yes, conveniently leave out the arctic cold, the giant hungry bears and the isolation.

“Know what you should do?  You should get one of those self-publishers. You can pay them to make you a book!” And it will sit neatly in boxes in my garage for the rest of my life.

“Have a baby!” Yeah, when the first one happens we’ll see.

“Sell your crap on Craigslist!” Actually, this one is pretty good.  I sold my kitchen table for $75.   Now I’m going through the house on a mission.  Everything is fair game!

Okay, so one out of five isn’t bad.  I’ve heard many versions of these over the years.  They always push my buttons, no matter who they’re from.

Why do we bristle so much when people give us advice?  Because unless we ask for feedback, we hear it as criticism.  If I ask for an honest opinion, it’s not very good form to get pissy with the person who gives it to me.   But if I’m just minding my own bidness, I can get all the pissy I want with you, because I did not ask for your feedback.

We’re an opinionated bunch lately.  I blame the Internet.  (Or, for SSTers, Nate.)  It’s given us a forum to express all kinds of ideas, random thoughts, ranty stuff, and advice.  The advice part is tricky.  When someone you care about is having difficulty, it’s tempting to offer the diamond-studded wisdom you know will lift her up.

What if she doesn’t want to hear it?  Then maybe you should keep it to yourself until she asks.

There are two kinds of advice that really bug me.

The givers try to help, but you’ve already tried everything they’re telling you.

They never believe you when you tell them that.  “Just do it this way.  No?  Then try my Aunty Margaret’s version.”  It never stops.  They’re sure if they keep making suggestions, one of them will be the magic bean.

How to Counter:

Sometimes just whining about something will make you feel better.  Your true friends will let you do this.  Unless you whine all the time, in which case they are justified in giving you a swat.

If you want to vent, tell them.  Say something like “I’m gonna blow, and I need you to just listen.”  Ladies, this works on men too, who like to offer solutions and don’t get why you don’t want to hear it.  There are times when solutions ain’t what you need.  You have to let them know that.

For those who won’t stop, simply smile and thank them.  You don’t have to listen or do what they say.

The givers have no idea what the bloody hell they are talking about.

This is the one writers have to contend with the most, as will anyone in a profession or activity where the inner workings aren’t known to most people.  As you learn the nuts and bolts, invariably roadblocks to progress will pop up.  The problem could be a lack of knowledge that you need to acquire, or a conundrum you need to take time to work through.  Well-meaning people will give you advice to try and ease your way.  Realize that unless they are actually experienced in the subject, they will not understand and their specific advice should not be taken.

How to Counter:

Understand:  I’m not dismissing advice givers who are coming from a similar place, like say someone who has juggled work/family and a new career/school/start-up business, who may know exactly what you are going through even though it’s not the same thing.  If those people want to help you cope, by all means let them.   Their advice will not only be helpful but valuable.  They should not be dismissed.

You can blow it off when other people tell you what you should write, or that you must pay someone to publish your book when you don’t want to, or any number of things non-writers will tell you about the business.  If you’re trying to learn from legitimate sources, you can’t afford to take bad advice that might wreck your career chances.  That’s like telling someone to run for President on the “Vote for me and I’ll dance naked on the White House lawn” ticket.

Instead, take the advice in the spirit in which it’s given—that of generosity.  Those who truly care for you will want the best for you and that alone is worth sitting through the most ridiculous suggestion on earth.

It’s one of the hardest emotions to handle, and writers have to deal with it constantly.  It’s disappointment.

When you get a rejection, you deal with it.  When you call someone for information and they don’t come through for you, there it is again.  When things in your personal life are not going well on top of that, it can get overwhelming.

How do you cope?

• Identify the cause of the disappointment. I don’t mean assign blame.  I mean think about why it’s there.  Did you expect something you didn’t get?  Were you supposed to do something and you forgot/blew it off, with consequences?  What happened to trigger that feeling?  Pinpoint it.

• Recognize that it’s okay to feel this way. It’s okay to say “I’m disappointed that___” and fill in the blank.  Once you acknowledge the feeling, then the cause can be addressed. 

• Control what you can control. That is, your thoughts.  Don’t let them veer toward negativity.  So things didn’t go the way you hoped.  Find the positive in a situation.  Concentrating on the negative will cause you to miss possible ways around the problem. 

• Communicate clearly. Disappointment comes from our needs being unmet.  If you’ve left those needs unarticulated, how will anyone know what they are?  A significant other cannot read your mind.  If you need something, you must ask for it.   Remember, you can’t make that person do what you want.   You can only state your wishes.

• If there’s nothing you can do, let it go. This is the hardest thing about disappointment.  The only way I know to cope with this is to push through the feeling.  If you bottle it up, it only gets worse.  A rejection is a perfect example.  Feel bad, feel sorry for yourself and then move on to the next query or revision.

Seek support when you are disappointed.  Keeping things inside tends to magnify them.  Bounce it off a friend and he or she may give you a fresh perspective on how to handle a letdown.  Write or journal how you feel.  In the course of putting your feelings down on paper, you might come up with a way to turn the situation to your advantage.

How do you cope with disappointment?  Please share in the comments.

I was checking out a terrific agent blog I just discovered—Pub Rants, by Agent Kristen—and found an older post on what makes her cringe.  That is, bad-mouthing an agent or agency to whom you’ve submitted.

I can’t imagine how it would help a writer to do this.  Manuscripts do get rejected.  All the time.  Agents don’t always write you back.  It’s not because they’re evil or hate you or harbor a conspiracy against publishing your psychic-dog-meets-abused-child tome.

It’s because they’re busy.

Some agents receive upwards of 200 queries per day.  Can you imagine having to go through that many emails / query letters / packets before five o’clock?

This economy is in a funk.  Every industry is laying people off right and left, and that includes publishing.  If they’re anything like most places I’ve seen, they’re trying to make do with less personnel at a time when queries have increased tremendously.  In tough times, some people think they can just write a book and make some money.

WRONG.  Those people have no idea what kind of competition they face.  Competition whose manuscripts are polished to a high sheen, whose queries are brilliantly crafted and targeted.  Even a terrific book with a terrific presentation might still be passed on for reasons that have nothing to do with the writing.

Give ’em a break.  Don’t bust their chops.  Publishing is small and word gets around.  It’s like royalty; everybody knows everybody and there’s apparently a hot grapevine. Besides, who would want to work with someone who calls them a rude, illiterate bastard because they rejected a book for a reason that might make perfect sense to any other human being?

I know it’s tempting to rant on the Internet.  It’s also easy.  Anyone can start a blog for any reason or get on a forum and cut loose.  I’m really the pot calling the kettle black, because in the past, I’ve complained about things that bothered me without necessarily censoring myself, aloud and otherwise.

It’s okay to write about how bummed you are when you get rejected.  But keep the focus on you.  No one cares what you think of Agent X, except your comments might be passed on to that person.

Since I’ve been submitting both to agents and journals, all I’ve had is rejections (so far).  I really appreciate getting something back, even if it’s a form letter.  If I don’t get anything after their recommended response time (check the guidelines—it’s usually there), I mark that one off and MOVE THE HELL ON.

It’s still early in my career.  I have time.  I have things to learn, too.  And more books to write, so when that dream agent asks me “So what else are you working on?” I can say “This, and this, and oh wait until you see this.”

Do your homework, people.  Find out what makes a successful query, find out how publishing works, and for heaven’s sake, polish your writing.  Work hard on it.  You can’t blame anyone for the vagaries of fate.  But if your work isn’t its very best you have no one to blame but yourself.