Author Holly Lisle just proceeded to annoy me–purposefully so–then grabbed me by the metaphorical lapels and shook me. She did this in her newsletter, and then said:

If you’re looking for a way to write a story that doesn’t step on toes, just pick up your toys and go home. You’re trying to play dead on paper. It can’t be done, you won’t do it, and if you try you’ll end up writing meaningless drivel.

If you are a writer, you give conflict a voice. If you fear conflict, you can’t be a writer—fiction is the art of pushing creative conflict to meaningful resolution through the actions of compelling characters in exciting places.

If you’re a writer, you’re giving a voice to the people who have struggled all their lives to give words to the same thoughts you think.

Her advice, though more lengthy than I can or should reproduce here, boiled down to: To be a good writer, it’s important to piss someone off.

It was sort of shocking advice for me. Given that I’m opinionated and argumentative, you’d think I would enjoy conflict more. But I don’t. It’s one of the reasons I left the legal profession. I could never find a way to leave any argument at work–it always followed me home and festered.

Conflict stresses me out because I get a little too passionate about everything. I prefer to be unstressed, and I also like to get along with people. Hence, a career change. I never think of myself as a provocateur, but given my recent reflections on why I write dark fiction, maybe I am. And I guess Holly Lisle would probably think that’s a good thing. Holly gives out a lot of good advice, so you might want to check her out.

Tags: craft, holly lisle, writing advice

This entry was posted on Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at 12:52 am and is filed under For Writers, Miscellaneous, Writing Craft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.