Qualifications and Advice

Oh, lookahere! It really is a new post!

So, while I have a little bit of a break between edits, and I'm taking a time out from the research I've been doing on Victorian London, so here we are with a shiny new post. Yay.

Anyway, I came across something on another blog, which struck me as both kind of amusing and fairly frightening. The blogger in question is a PA author (a new PA author, I might add), which is fine, I suppose (though we know how I feel about the vanity publisher that is PublishAmerica.)

But, this blog is aimed at giving advice to other writers. Okay, his intentions may be good, but upon reading this blog, good intentions are really all he has going for him. He's spouting off misinformation and half-truths as facts. He doesn't know what he's talking about, to be honest, and if an aspiring writer stumbles across his blog... To make matters worse, the advice he's offering is also loaded with grammatical errors as well.

So that got me to wondering, what, if anything, qualifies a writer to give advice?

I've been asked for advice, but beyond the most basic of info, I hesitate to offer any simply because I don't feel I'm qualified to offer it. Yes, I have some experience, but not nearly enough that I feel comfortable telling someone else what to do. And who knows? Maybe I'm more than qualified, but since I don't feel it - I'm not going to do it.

Now, I have to wonder who on earth would accept writing advice from someone who doesn't know the difference between a plural and a possessive? Or doesn't understand that there/their/they're and to/two/too are NOT interchangeable? And it isn't that it was a simple typo, confined to one post. He consistently misuses these words, repeatedly. What's worse? When a commenter pointed out what he was doing wrong, instead of learning, the blogger grew angry and basically wrote the commenter off as being "elitist." So, not only is he spouting off wrong nonsense, but he won't even listen to reason and accept that he doesn't know what he's talking about, and learn from it so that he can actually help someone else.

So, what does qualify a writer to give advice? Number of books published? Who they are published by? How long they've been writing? What genre they are published in? Or does it even matter if the person has never been published?

Or am I just being too nitpicky?