On the up: Good writing
On the down: Bad advice

Recently, I went to one of these book talk things organised by one of the bookstores. Always good to go poke about and see what's happening in the local writing scene, seeing as I'm such a wannabe, try-hard sort of aspiring writer myself.

There was a panel of four writers, one of which was a really good old family friend who I've known since I was knee high. Lovely lovely, always good to go support your writerly friends.

Unfortunately for me, because I didn't wake up in time, I missed my good old writerly friend's bit of blurb. By the time I got there, it was some obnoxious lady's turn to be gabbing away. She had a sort of ridiculous pen name, that may just as well have been Xena, Warrior Princess - it was so cringeworthy and ludicrous, it was hard to get past the name enough to actually want to read what she'd written.

But okay, a rose by any other name, etc...

Perhaps I would have given her another chance, IF she hadn't started saying
- that all stories and novels have a formula
- that the first chapter must always start with the main event
- and that the next few chapters would then give background to this main event

She stressed several times that all stories must follow this formula.

Obviously, she hadn't read any Daniel DeFoe (who pioneered the novel in the 18th century), any Gustave Flaubert, any Hemingway, any Steinbeck, any Hesse, any Gabriel Garcia Marquez, any Salman Rushdie, any Henry James, any Roald Dahl, any Edgar Allen Poe, any Evelyn Waugh... oh I could go on for hours.

If indeed, she had taken some of her time to actually read proper writing by some proper old greats, she sure wouldn't have come up with this farcical theory that all stories must follow a formula.

Really, as if calling herself Xena the warrior princess wasn't bombastic enough, she had to go dig herself into a bigger hole by advising all aspiring writers to write formulaically. Really, does the world need any more formulaic Jeffrey Archers, Dan Browns and Danielle Steeles?

If that's what it means to take advice from an "established" writer, I think I'd much rather piddle on with my bad, unformulaic writing thank you very much!