No advice is “one size fits all.” Even the best, most helpful advice isn’t going to work well for every situation, so it’s far better to understand the reasons behind writing advice or grammar rules than to just assume that something must or can’t work.

For example, a common piece of advice—especially for new fiction writers—is that they shouldn’t get stuck on trying to succeed with a single story. Instead, the advice says that if we get stuck (whether in drafting, editing, or querying), we should shove that story in a drawer and try again with a different story. Sometimes we might even hear specifics, such as “any story that needs more than 5 editing passes should be abandoned.”

As I’ve pointed out many times before, just because advice is common—such as “write every day“—doesn’t mean it’s good advice. However, just because advice doesn’t work for us doesn’t mean it’s “bad” advice either.

Rather, most advice has a kernel of good intentions inside. If we can identify that kernel, we’ll know when we can ignore the aspects that don’t work for us. *smile*

So let’s take a look at the above advice: Is it better to give up on a story that’s not working and start fresh? Or can we revise our way to success?