The State of the Mur and another link

I’ve been gratified to see how many people have emailed me to say, “We don’t pay you and we love the show, so update whenever the heck you want.”

Of course, I’m paraphrasing. But I’m still very pleased.

I came across another link that I think is quite important to people who listen to this podcast: Jeff Vandermeer (or rather, his doppleganger, Evil Monkey) posted the introduction to the book The Evil Monkey Guide to Creative Writing. Essentially it says most writing advice is crap… and this is the intro to a writing book. I’m interested to see what else he has to say in the book.

But what I got out of it is to take any writing advice with a grain of salt. Writing - like any art - is so damn personal that there really isn’t a right way to do it. You do what works for you; what matters is getting the words on the paper. Sure, if you hear advice, and it works, then that’s excellent. BUT if it doesn’t, you have to realize that perhaps nothing is wrong with you. You just don’t jive with the advice given.