Tactfully telling someone they should consider another career...

Just tell him. Get off the tightrope and tell him he must know his writing is bad. Don't bite your tongue. A friend tells a friend when they have snot hanging off the end of their nose. You don't have to be brutal or hurtful, but just tell him. Tell him he doesn't have what it takes and it looks like no amount of effort will change that.

ETA: I know someone who is absolute shite and they had a book published...it can happen. I would say it is the worst book ever published. I see the publisher in the Background & Beware forum here and I want to SCREAM that they are not a real publisher...but all indications suggest that they are. The thread with their name on it has people vouching for them. But I'm telling you, there wasn't a single sentence in this book worthy of publication and there it is...published by this publisher. I keep wanting to post in that thread saying there is no possible way they are on the up and up...but one post even says that Ms. Snark says they're legit. Go figure. Maybe your friend has a chance in hell after all.


Sign me CYNICAL

Having read your work linked in your siggie, I have to say...

who do you think you are to judge?

tomothecat said:

I said I don't have any right to judge in my post. It's a matter of watching him submit and resubmit and resubmit, knowing it isn't gonna happen.

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How do you know?

Here's a thing, though. I've seen people go from apparently-hopeless to pretty darn good in a couple years. Of course, y'need honest critique to get there, and you need to be willing to learn, but it can happen

Good point, Sid. You never know.

"McDonald's is hiring" works for me.

Seriously, why do you have to tell them? Who are we to judge? Seriously, let them figure it out on their own. I for one am not comfortable with telling others "you can't write; do something else instead." Heck, ten years ago probably everyone should have told me "Ray, you can't write."

Be a friend and be supportive. Give honest, constructive crits if you must. But really, it's not your place to judge whether they would succeed or not as writers.

However, as a friend, you have the obligation to tell them, "No, please don't" when they say they're going to a "publisher" such as PublishAmerica. It's the right thing to do.

There's a story, I think it's in Stphen King's On Writing, about a man who woke up one day, quit his job, and set about writing the Great American Novel. Sadly, it was a steaming pile on unpublishable dreck. The guy realized writing was a long-haul proposition, got himself a subsistence job tending bar or some such, and wrote book after book after book. All of them sucked the big one, according to King. But, with each one the guy got just a little better, just a *little*. He studied his markets and charted bestsellers. He sat down and wrote his seventh or eighth manuscript . . . and lo! It wasn't the worst thing on the face of the planet. It even got an agent's interest. After EXHAUSTIVE rewrites and drafts . . . it sold to a publisher for 7 figures.

The moral? Not even Stephen King could tell if a writer had it in him to make it one day. I say let the man (?) alone, let him write books that won't sell. He'll either adapt or he won't. If he does, he might be the next "overnight" success.

My .02

Best,

Scott

tomothecat said:

I suppose anything is possible. Like I've said, I've seen published stories and wondered how they ever got published, but this still goes beyond that. It sort of reads like a bad fanfic. And hey, I'm not saying I'm great. I'm fully aware that I may never get published. And even if I am published, it wouldn't give me the right to say someone isn't as good as I am, or I'm better than this one or that. It's a question of whether or not I should sit back and let him get rejected and never know why, or say something and potentially damage his spirit.

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Now you're just a bundle of contradictions. If you're fully aware you may never get published...WHY WRITE? Isn't this why you want to tell your friend not to bother?

It reminds me of something a young child might have written in big bubbly letters on that paper with the blue dotted lines in the middle, and maybe a crayon drawing of a horsey licking a lollipop.

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Unless you have something more to offer your 'friend' than this, I'd say keep your mouth shut.

I'm not against people telling friends they just don't have it...whatever the it may be. If they feel that way...to say anything else is just to lie. I would want my friend to be truthful to me. It would be worse if you lied and he found out you thought he was shit.

tomothecat said:

I'm aspiring to get published, but even if I didn't, I'd still write, true. It'd be devastating though.

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Okay...if you are saying this...then leave him alone. What kind of a friend would give a friend advice they wouldn't themselves follow?

I'd be hesitant to be so brutally honest if the friendship is important to you. If your friend truly believes he is talented, he's likely to not only become angry with you, but also blow off what you've said. So, he'll probably continue writing anyway, and you've damaged the friendship for nothing (except that you will no longer have to read the crap, which is saying something, I suppose).

That said, I wouldn't completely hide your concerns. I suggest telling him that you think he should find someone else to read his work, that you don't feel comfortable being candid, and that he may benefit from non-biased eyes. In other words, let someone else be the bad guy. Hopefully your friend will get a clue, and you won't run the risk of damaging the relationship.

And there's always a chance someone else will like his work...

tomothecat said:

This is my conflict. And thus the reason for this post, which I guess is fast becoming a conflict of its own.

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lol. I suppose. My first gut feeling is TELL HIM. But if you are willing to write no matter what...then why shouldn't you allow him the same blind hope? That's the part of your conflict I don't understand.

tomothecat said:

Because if someone, much more a friend, said "I don't think you could ever possibly be published" after having honestly read most if not all of my work, it would really be a hard blow. It hasn't happened, and I don't want to be the person to do it to someone else. But then at the same time I feel like I'm holding back by not saying something. I don't know. Obviously, I'm conflicted and going back and forth and back.

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Why don't you meet yourself in the middle and tell him that if he wants to develop as a writer he's going to need a lot of work. His stuff is far from being there and he needs to do something to grow as a writer. Just don't tell him it's good...that's the worst thing you could ever do.

KTC said:

lol. I suppose. My first gut feeling is TELL HIM. But if you are willing to write no matter what...then why shouldn't you allow him the same blind hope? That's the part of your conflict I don't understand.

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Tell him what? That she doesn't like his work? Okay.

Just don't tell him that he's unpublishable, because you can't know that, and you can't decide that, unless you own all the publishing venues in the world.

Siddow said:

Tell him what? That she doesn't like his work? Okay.

Just don't tell him that he's unpublishable, because you can't know that, and you can't decide that, unless you own all the publishing venues in the world.

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That would be me. I own them all. You're on my list, MelonHead.

I agree with what most people are saying in that it might be best to let it lie, or at least tell him what KTC suggested.

The only time I think I would seriously consider telling a friend that they were a very bad writer with no hopes of publication, is if they had put all their eggs into one basket. If they had a family to support, but had quit their job, taken out a second mortgage, and sold the car in order to write full time. If all his/her hopes rested on getting published, if his/her family would suffer because of his/her pursuing this dream, then I would feel I needed to say something.

I'm in ur slush.

Making slushies.