Getting Writing Advice From The Internet May Be A Big Mistake

 This is an area that, unfortunately, far too many authors have fallen for. It is not intentional and I do believe so many authors out there are trying their best to do the "right thing" when it comes to making their stories great or taking the right approaches with their publishing career. And yet, far too many are being sucked into misinformation and misguided suggestions they have found out there on the Internet.

I really noticed this just recently when I saw a lengthy thread on one of the writing social media groups. Someone had asked a basic question about romance writing. That part is fine. But what followed was a lot of misinformation, and nearly 50+ responses later, other authors had turned the conversation into nothing but rumors, false information, or just their personal thoughts. Now here is where the problem turned ugly. The authors who were talking the most in this thread, proclaiming their "knowledge" of the field turned into "the experts." Later posts would answer a side question about something and another author would "cite" that previous expert author... even though their answer and perspective was far from correct.

Authors of today, who have so much access to information out there on the Internet need to be more than cautious when doing their research. Yes, I know that many will claim that finding the correct answer is almost impossible, but this is far from the truth. It isn't that the information is impossible to find, it is just not what they maybe want to hear. 

So where do you go for the quality and authoritative information? The true experts. Go to the publishers (and not companies that proclaim to be a publisher but just print your self-published book. Go to the editors. Go to the agents. Go to the people who have worked in the industry and are now potentially doing freelance work. Those social media threads are often more of a situation of "the blind leading the blind" and this IS NOT what you want to follow.