if ten-million fireflies lit up the world

[foreverlasting]

The other day Lynn Viehl posted at Genreality about her interactions with aspiring writers. 

No one seems to have any idea how much money the average professional writer in the U.S. makes. They never believe me when I tell them it’s about six thousand dollars. What about that girl who wrote Twilight? they demand. She made fifty million last year! And my idea for my book is far superior to hers.

Marjorie M. Liu followed up with an entry of her own:

Technically, nothing wrong with that. But those first essays would come back, marked blood-red, practically apocalyptic in appearance (none of us were spared), and those same girls and boys who thought they could write like Annie Dillard would scream the loudest—and then become so preoccupied with this injustice inflicted upon them (because how dare a professor not find them geniuses) that they would forget that they had come there to learn.

A while back,Tess Gerritsen at Muderati also had some things to say about taking advice. The reason I went looking through her entries is because she actually wrote an even better post on a similar vein a couple years back, but I haven't been able to locate it. I think I may have a hardcopy at my family's home. I'll look for it when I move out of my apartment on Wednesday.