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Message: <blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 1604859" data-attributes="member: 812">Elmore Leonard is my hero. And that is some GREAT advice.Another principle I encountered that's always stuck with me is from a How To Play Guitar book (forget the title) in which the writer repeatedly admonishes his readers to go easy on the whammy bar (if you don't know, that's the little handle sticking up from the bottom end of the strings that the guitarist can yank on to make the sound go all waaoooaaaoooaaooo). Over and over again he says, "Don't reef on the whammy bar. Take it easy."Finally at one point in the book he says, "Look, I know you're reading me saying, 'Easy on the whammy bar,' and you're thinking to yourself, 'Yeah, but Jimmy Hendrix does it.'"He was Jimmy Hendrix. Trust me, take it easy on the whammy bar."Which is really the same as the Beau Brummel principle. GQ magazine used to have a column on men's wear written by some incredibly fussy fellow who seemed to think we were all still in the twenties. I loved it and read it religiously. At one point he did a "10 Fashion No-Nos," (hang on, I'm getting to the point) one of which was "Never wear a hankerchief in your pocket AND a carnation in your lapel. I know Beau Brummel got away with it, but he was Beau Brummel."All of which ties neatly into James Michener's famous advice to young writers:"If you can't beat Tolstoy, we don't need you."I know it sounds harsh and unencouraging -- but, well, if it makes you want to give up, then I guess you ought to give up. For myself, I know that "beat Tolstoy" doesn't mean "write War and Peace, only better." It means, "Write what Tolstoy could never have written, what Leonard never thought of, what Silverberg didn't imagine. Write what's you. What only you can provide. Without a lot of hooptedoodle."</blockquote>

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