Writing Advice Pages

There is an overabundance of web sites these days exclusively devoted to offering advice for the budding (or not-so-budding) author. Usually I take these advice sites with a grain of salt. Oh, I read them and try to absorb whatever knowledge looks useful I find on them, but usually there's nothing really new to find on them.

Take this list of 101 Writing Tips found at Psychoprogs for example. After sifting through all 101 tips I only found a couple that were useful, but the vast majority of them were either regurgitated, generic advice or just too situational to be any use. This particular list was refreshing in the fact that it kept a bit of humor throughout, that was a plus.

Other sites offer horrible advice. One I found a while back described a surefire way to write a novel in one week! Amazing! Ludicrously bad advice, but interesting to read none the less and yet even with terrible advice pages like this you might find a few spots of good advice.

Perhaps someone should start a web page that works as a guide on how to utilize writing guides. I'd consider it, but no one would take me seriously and I'm way too lazy anyway. I will offer one nugget of advice though: Don't take these writing guides too seriously and yet don't stop reading them. Try to use the collected advice that you pick up from everywhere to form one big picture. Shape it into your own personal style.