What's the WORST writing advice you've heard?

I'd say the worst advice I see is people telling every writer to write to market. Now, I am not saying writing to market is bad. For many it makes sense and might be a sound financial decision but that seems to be the first thing that flies out of someone's mouth whenever a newbies asks for advice. It's two things: Write to market and write a series.

Everyone doesn't have to write the same thing. It confuses me. I thought being indie meant you didn't have to conform. I thought it meant you could be free with what you write. I thought indies were supposed to be the unique artists who could write whatever the heck they wanted. That's a crock because many indies do the same things we criticize publishers for. We write the same old stuff that easily fits in a box. No different than trade publishing.

Many indies are writing the SAME stuff over and over and over. Just go to Amazon and pick out any genre. Look at the so-called bestseller lists and see how many duplicate books you'll find. Most have the same covers, the same fonts, the same plots. Many don't know what writing to market means. These days when people say it, they mean writing to a TREND. We all write to market. Every one of us has a market because there is always a reader for every book. Now, some people's audiences might be bigger than others but we all write to market. 

Writing to trend is what everyone is doing now and I think it's a disservice to tell a newbie they won't sell unless they write about billionaires, alpha males or women with glowing hands, etc. That's not true. Unless someone is interested in writing to trend, then it shouldn't be advised everywhere. The same with the series thing. Contrary to popular belief, standalones do sell and many readers enjoy them.

Once again, not saying writing to trend or whatever is bad if that's what you want but not every author is interested in that and we just keep recycling that same, lame advice. One size does not fit all. If writing about billionaires was all it took to make you rich and famous then every author with a billionaire book would be EL James. Every author with a teen wizard would be JK Rowling, etc. People seem to forget that these people CREATED and perfected trends. They didn't write to them.

So while people wanna say you won't sell unless you write what everyone else is writing, then how do you explain almost every uber-successful author (even the indies) writing things that were once original and then had others come along and copy?

Sure is funny that for every EL James or JK Rowling, you got a million authors writing the same type of books that you've never heard of.

So I'd post this on a billboard: "ATTENTION NEWBIES: Remember that not all advice fits everyone and pay close attention to those giving advice. Find your own path."

Write fewer books. Take your time and agonize over every sentence. Your work should be literary. Deliberately ignore all the tropes. Chase awards. Keep trying to get tradpubbed. Your agent and your publisher have your best interests at heart. Never use adjectives (yes, I saw that one--obviously they meant adverbs, but even then, bad advice). Never use sentence fragments. Always make your paragraphs the same length, about 3-5 sentences. If your work is good, it will find its audience without any other help.

Where do they get this stuff, eh?

I absolutely hate the "write to market" advice. When you look at what these people are saying, it's just writing to trend, but it makes them feel better about it.

I see people all the time telling newbies they don't need to do anything but read, and somehow they will magically learn how to tell a story they can sell to someone. Sure, reading a lot is helpful, but knowing what the author did and why, and analyzing that choice, is much more helpful than just randomly reading books.

The worse advice I ever read was to write what you know. I was a kid. I didn't know anything! It put me back years and years, thinking I'd never be able to write a book anyone would read. Even now, I have a hard time looking at some of my ideas, because that little niggling voice in the back of my head says, "But, you don't know anything about that! You can't write that book, might as well give up."