101 Reasons to Stop Writing

(Pronounced swin-ta.)

Stop Writing if You Need This Advice award nominees this week:

• Agent Kristin says Don’t write your autobiography. Well, she says don’t admit it. I say don’t write it. If your life was interesting you’d already be rich.
• She also says don’t ask about selling the film rights. Someone has to buy the fscking book first.
• Lynn Veihl observes that blatant self-promotion makes you look like an asshole.
• The Rejecter hates bad writers who think that Grammar is the Amish word for your mom’s mom.
• Nathan Bransford (in a long, plotless post) explains that if your novel has no plot, it’s not “literary”, it’s just shit.
• Fiction Scribe has a bee in the bonnet about repeating plot points.
• Elise thinks you should act professionally. That this even needs to be said …
• Lori Perkins reminds you not to bitch, whine, pester or otherwise attempt to correspond after a rejection.
• Victoria Strauss advises that paying to attend a writer’s conference run by a vanity publisher is more expensive than a herbal enema, for the same result.

Miss Snark deserves a category of her own (SWiYNTA-MS, pronounced swin-tams). She warns against:

• The “lunacy” (her word) of submitting to only one agent.
• Ending a book on a cliffhanger.
• The egoism of thinking that agents owe you anything for reading your submission. You owe them that minute of their life back.
• Cold-calling to pitch your idea for a novel. This was covered by Agent Kristin a few weeks back, but it’s worth repeating for the anecdotes.
• Sending your queries by Fed Ex. Insert tasteless Britney Spears joke here.
• Thinking there’s a shortcut around the slushpile.
• CC’ing an email to more than one agent. If you’re too lazy to write separate emails, how did you string 80,00 words together?
• Trying to pitch a ghostwriting idea to a celebrity. Who thinks of these things?