"Holly Lisle - Mugging The Muse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lisle Holly)

by men who did not have college educations. Michaelangelo did not have a college
degree, nor did Leonardo da Vinci. Thomas Edison didn't. Neither did Mark Twain
(though he was granted honorary degrees in later life.) All of these people were
professionals. None of them were experts.
Get your education from professionals, and always avoid experts.

An expert is somebody with a degree. The degree doesn't mean he knows how to do
what he's an expert at тАУ he might have absolutely no practical experience. But he has
the degree, which confers on him the right to impress other people with his
accomplishment (which was the getting of the degree), and to get paid for his expert
opinions. An expert gets paid by third parties тАУ his work is never placed in the open
market where it will either sink or swim on its own merit. Experts earn more money
and more security by conforming тАУ if they conform for a long enough time without
annoying anyone or doing anything unexpected, they can earn higher positions or, in
college systems, tenure. Therefore, in an expert system, the talented, the challenging
and the brash are weeded out, and the inoffensive mediocre remain. Many college
professors are experts.

A professional is someone who makes a living working in the field in question. A
professional architect designs and builds houses for clients. A professional
hairdresser cuts and styles hair for clients. A professional writer writes stories,
articles, or books for readers. All of these people get paid by the people who are
direct consumers of their work. If they do bad work, they don't get paid. The open
market will weed out the bad professionals, so the ones who have been around for a
while and who are still working are probably worth learning from.
What I learned from two years of nursing school at a community college was
primarily political тАУ тАЬGet involved in your local chapter of the North Carolina
Nursing Association, fight to keep the ANA from making a bachelor's degree the
entry level for an RN, don't stand up when doctors come into the nurses' station or
give them your seat.тАЭ I learned some basics on patient care, too тАУ but I didn't really
learn to be a nurse until I was out in the field working with other nurses. They were
HOLLY LISLE
 MUGGING THE MUSE: WRITING FICTION FOR LOVE AND MONEY 26

the ones who said, тАЬLook, you see somebody who comes in looking like that, don't
wait for the doctor to get here before you stick O2 on him and order a twelve-lead.
Just do it. And break out the D5W and start a microdrip IV right away, too. And for
godsake, make sure the crash cart is ready and the paddles are warmed up.тАЭ
In writing, too, I learned the things I needed to know about the profession from a
brief apprenticeship with Mercedes Lackey and another with Stephen Leigh. From
Stephen, I learned the nuts and bolts of writing:

1. Avoid passive voice
2. Use active verbs

3. Eliminate most adjectives and adverbs
4. Use concrete detail
5. Tell a story worth telling, and,

6. Know your characters.