Panic and despair and motivation. Nostalgia and issues. And gaming.

[la_belle_laide]

Having decided that it was Agent Time, I took out novel, query, and synopsis and got down to some serious panic and despair. Then, I took said bits and pieces to That Well-Known Writing Place (where all the agents and editors actually come and hang out sometimes as if they were real people and not angels with the keys to heaven wrapped in their unyielding fists) and asked for criticism.

I got tons on the query: Too confusing, too vague, too specific, too many words, add a word here or there, I can't pronounce the title, strike this paragraph, add this and remove that.

And on the first eight pages, the best piece of critique I've gotten (on this new, revamped version anyway) was: I like your style; it's nice and tight. I like the premise. But I have no idea what the hell you're talking about.

And there is my biggest problem. I know what I'm talking about, I know where I'm going with it and what comes next. And I know my own reasons. I think I'm taking for granted that the reader will be patient with the story, as I have been patient. But really, that's not so. People have told me again and again to drop my guy right into a fight for the first chapter. I suppose they're right; readers want action! No one wants to read any mysterious goings-on, or clues to what might happen or what has happened. People want excitement while reading a story, not a stingy author who says, “Wait for it! It's coming, let me just do this my way in my own time!”

Note to self: In fiction, there is no “in my own time.” You are on the reader's time, and that's all there is.

So I tossed around the idea to throw some zombies into the first chapter. I dunno. Not really. ;) It Needs Work, is the very short synopsis.

Kung Fu tonight was good, and the fullest house I've seen there in months. We just had a ton of folks, so there was no sparring 'cause there just wasn't any room. I was a little disappointed because the Dragon was there and I've been wanting to spar him again. But, we did some really cool drills and I got to work with Lady Chrysanthemum who was gracious about the whole broken rib thing. Te Ji Nan returned after having broken his ankle, and the Red-haired Assassin got his brown belt, to much applause.

Also, The Empress not only drove herself to and from the kwon, but in her own car; a big monster white Caddy. I sighed because it marks the end of an era - our car-ride together and our conversations about body hair, men, deodorant, music, college (and the prospect of it, in her case,) culture, life, and of course Kung Fu. Also because my first car was a Caddy too. I don't mean Shinigami; I actually had a Caddy before that. A big, black dinosaur: an 81 Sedan DeVille that I loved to the moon and back. But I was also thinking of Shinigami, still sitting there in the driveway. I know I should sell it. Not only for the money, but because someone should be driving it and loving it. But, just not yet. My Dad adored the car as much as I did (it became his after I got my Elantra, whose name by the way is Ronin,) and I just associate the car with my Dad. He came with me to test drive it during a huge snowstorm.

Anyway, now the Empress has her own big dinosaur of a car on the road, and I'm happy for her. :D

Here's what rules: coming home from Kung Fu, taking a hot shower, and knowing that when I go to bed tonight, I do not have to get up any kind of early and drive over an hour to a longass day at college. In fact, I really don't have to do anything tomorrow except take care of birds, play with (and medicate) dogs, and go to the store for soap and yogurt. (I'm hooked on this freaking fabulous Greek yogurt these days called Oikos. It has honey in it and just thinking about it makes me want to stuff spoonfuls of it into my facehole.)

While I was at the store the other day, they had this little holiday party type of thingie-thing going on, with demos, reps, free stuff, coupons, samples, and a two-person band playing holiday tunes. They played holiday and winter themed-songs throughout, until I was bringing my stuff to the register. Then, randomly, they played a Dinah Washington song. I said, "Hi, Dad" and then I had to get right on out of there before I got all teary.

Let's see, what else what else what else. I started playing Resident Evil Zero (RE:0 from now on,) and I kinda like it in some ways and kinda don't. I think if it had come before RE:DC on the Wii I might have liked it better, because you get to walk around at least. But it's really just a revamped version of the one that was on Gamecube, so you don't aim at the screen (WTF, how am I supposed to get headshots?) and the controls are very oldschool Playstation. Eight-way directional, unwieldy, and too slow. The puzzles are neat and the characters are kinda cute, but I'm not in love with it. Actually I rather like RE:DC much better, come to think of it.

Oh, wow, what else have I done to fill my days off? Oh, I took this weekend off work so that I could spend time with Jo-chan, but my poor girl got ridiculously sick about as soon as she walked in the door. I mean like biohazard lockdown sick, as in I thought she was going to sprout an eyeball from her arm or something. She had to go right back home. The SUCK. So after she left I threw the dogs in my shower and gave them both a bath. Now they actually look like someone's pets again. Then I cleaned the tub and the entire bathroom and after that is when I sat down and started to truly despair and panic over the novel and the prospect of sending out queries and samples which are too wordy, too sparse, too vague, too bogged down with detail, too confusing, too sprawling, just too, too, too.

I watch Family Guy DVDs with Mom, and last night Lois Griffin had a quote that just nailed my thoughts in Twatlight and everything else that I hate but everyone else seems to love:

“Oh, my God! They liked it? Stop it! Stop clapping right now! What's wrong with you? These people shouldn't be encouraged! They should be punished!... This is the kind of mind-numbing schlock that's turning our society into a cultural wasteland! This isn't art! This isn't even entertainment! This...blows!"

Let me do something awesome!

Universe, I'm asking!* ^_^





*But I am not asking iUniverse.

Comments

[malenka-zeut.livejournal.com]

Dear god I know that yogurt! It's like train going through tunnel-atomic bomb-tower collapsing in reverse film good! There's another one called Greek Gods that is at least as good. Well, now that that's out of my system, I see the problem with the critiques you're getting. Probably because most of us love your writing so we never saw that. On the up side, once you get a following you can publish the originals and sell the same story to the same people twice, and for more money. It'd be like the uncut unedited version of LOTR, only in book form. Well, I'd buy it anyway, and I bet other people would too. It must be hard though, to try and trim for a wider audience. But that seems to be the way of things since the printing press. Genius is seldom recognized up front.

[la-belle-laide.livejournal.com]

Believe me, the only "genius" going on in my head is of the kind required for every day deviousness. ;)

I think that, should I ever really get anything published, I'd probably be way too embarrassed to release the stuff in its original form. I'm so torn between "Publishing companies are always right!" and "but what about the spirit of independent art?"

The spirit of independent art works beautifully for musicians and movie-makers of all sorts, but there's a line, and it leaves writers on the other side. I feel very complicated about the whole thing.

These comments merit a whole new post. O_O

part 1

[spatterdash.livejournal.com]

I guess the hardest thing about writing is learning to listen to others when it comes to getting critiqued. Or at least, hearing things that are something besides "omg you are the BEST and this is BRILLIANT," which is what 90% of your friends and family will say (and actually think), and those are usually the first cadre of people who read your work.

I know i always get defensive and my first response is to say all of this kind of stuff--i know best, it's my story, but you don't understand, etc. And, sometimes that's true--some readers aren't sophisticated enough to understand what you are doing with your work.

These people at the Big Famous Writing Critique place though, are not those readers, and if you have to take a couple days to get past the knee-jerk "but but but!" response, do so. Walk away and come back to it, or write something else in the interim.

I think, if you sit down and make a list of all the things they said to you, a few things will jump out as something that many people are stumbling over, things that get said more than once by several kinds of readers. And those are the things that, much as it hurts or that you may not want to, you will have to address if you want to actually sell the book and write for a larger or general readership.

It does NOT mean you have to dumb down your book or change the entire story, but clearly if several people have said "i love this and this and this but i don't know what you are talking about" (including now these authors/agents), you have a problem in the book, period. Maybe the solutions aren't the "common" or "obvious" solutions--genius is making the uncommon or the unexpected actually WORK--so maybe you don't open the book with a massive battle, but you have to find SOME way to keep readers engaged.

You rant often about Twilight, which i agree, those books eat all the shit in China with their bare hands. But, they are a success because they speak to their readers in a very basic, prepubertal, unintellectual level--the writing style and quality is immaterial, because everyone who loves them is reading them with the part of their mind that's their inner 13-year-old drawing hearts in the margins in pink inkpen. That's not your audience, or the book you're writing, so (and i hope this is not too blunt) rant away, but Twilight-syndrome ultimately got nothing to do with your own writing, unless you plan to begin writing for the swoony-teen (or swoony-teen-nostalgia) audience in a supernatural romance milieu.

part 2

[spatterdash.livejournal.com]

(my damn comment was too long)

You reference JK Rowling a lot, too, which i think she's better than Meyer as a writer, but she's writing for a similar market: youth. YA books have had crossover appeal in the adult market for so many years because frankly, our culture celebrates youth/adolescence and puts in on a pedstal, so vast swaths of the Western world are drawn to nostalgia about it, and that directs their readership. Your book is not aimed at that reader, so again, not the person to be comparing yourself to.

If you dream of THAT level of extreme success, you need to look seriously at the writing of someone who has it, but with an adult supernatural/horror readership. You should be comparing your work to that of William Gibson, or Stephen King, someone who has zombies and other worlds in their book but has gotten masses of people to read them. And what would THEY do to address these critiques? Because, it might be something formulaic, but it might not, but they would find a means to address them. Clearly they have, because of their success, y'know?

I am actually not a fan of Stephen King's writing at ALL, but the man can write a mofowing bestseller. Of course, he said in "On Writing," that some of his early books he doesn't even remember writing because he was on so many drugs, so y'know, that's not the best advice. But the rest of that book is worth reading.

I don't know what the point of this comment is, beyond that these are things i struggle with as a writer, too, writerly intent vs readability, and how best to serve the story. When to cling to convictions and when the best way to serve the story is to rewrite. So ultimately, you have my empathy and solidarity, and i feel certain that you ARE a talented enough writer to find a way to make your work work.

Have you taken a writing class recently? If not, it might be something helpful. And, i mean, to write something NEW with the class, weekend workshop, etc. TBH, it feels like you are too close and too twined up with this novel to see it objectively, but that perhaps in the writing of something new (short stories, or memoir for example) you would in the process have some epiphanies about Haecceity that you could bring back to it. Sometimes the best way to see something is to stop looking at it, y'know?

<3 and luck to you, wherever the writing leads.

Re: part 2

[la-belle-laide.livejournal.com]

Part two!

I so much hope you know that when I talk about being "the next JK ROWLING!!!11111" I am so kidding that it blows through the ceiling of the "kidding" meter. I don't have any hope for that kind of success, nor do I think I'd want it, or handle it with any kind of grace. I'd probably end up in a room with really soft walls.

Her money, well I'd take about a quarter of that, but that's why I'm going to play MegaMillions today. I've got a better chance at that mofo than I do at massive literary success. Lightning, she does not strike three writers in a decade. Maybe not even two. :)

Joke, seriously. Every time.

When it comes to really why I dwell on someone like JK so much, it's for a reason similar to why I dwell on Smeyers. It's personal. I like her. I think she's gracious. She cares about what she does and--I know this is considered a faux pas in entertainment but I like it anyway--she sends a really positive message.

Believe me, I skipped through most of the last Harry Potter. Sometimes her writing itself kinda leaves me hanging, and i actually didn't enjoy the overall ending of the series. I had some face-palm moments with the HP series for sure. But, I just love her.

And in no way, in this world or any of those alternates, would I truly dream of that level of success!

I feel the same way about King. I love the man. There's no question that he's written the same five novels over the last twenty years, but he also cares about what he does and he seems an overall genuine dude. Reading the latest Stephen King is like vacationing in the coziest little cabin all wrapped in a bathrobe with a cup of hot chocolate. I don't know, he comforts me. I respect his success. And I really believe he's like the Shakespeare of our time, because Shakespeare wasn't this stuffy guy writing high-toned literature for snobs; it's only in HUGE retrospect that it's like that. He was writing for common people, to make them LOL and give them a huge, bloody, satisfying body count at the end of tragedies. He happened to be a genius, but that wasn't the point back then.

Another writer who I love more than her books is Margaret Weiss. I'm not the biggest fantasy fan, but she's got this one character, Raistlin Majere, that she writes so beautifully that I read her entire 20+ book series. I literally skipped entire chapters in each book and scanned the pages for a capital R. "Elves, elves, elves, RAISTLIN? Awww, 'Rain.' Drat." But she seems like a nice lady and again, she cares about what she does so I appreciate her.

Gosh, it's been an age since I took a writing class or even spoke to any of my old professors. I should. And you are TOO right about being too close to this one particular story. You know when this novel was at its best? When I was writing other stuff for kicks. Man, I should do that.

THANK YOU, and also, I feel like I need to make a whole 'nother LJ post about writers and why I like them now because you got me thinking. :D

Re: part 1

[la-belle-laide.livejournal.com]

Oh man, believe me, I have NO problem doing what I'm told with a story when one of my betters who is trying to help me sell it says, "Okay, so cut out the first fifty pages, dress your favorite character in crotchless panties, have an elephant relieve itself on the middle of the manuscript and rub it together briskly, then count backwards from 79 and crow like a rooster."

I do get that moment of "BUT BUT BUT!!!" and then I actually do think about it for the rest of the night and usually end up taking the suggestions. When you're right, you're right. And if the part about the rooster or the crotchless panties doesn't make sense, I'll ask someone else. (Like you, for instance. :D I was gonna re-post a few things to our group, soon.) And if three people tell me the same thing about the crotchless panties and the rooster, then by gosh I follow the Snark Rule.

My work, today, is cut out for me. :)

Oh my gosh, there's no question that Twatlight is a bag of turds that happens to be on fire.

And honestly--I do mean, honestly--it's not sour grapes and I'm truly not jealous of Smeyers. My beef with her isn't that her writing is lame but successful. There are tons of successful books that I don't like. Stuff gets popular that makes me go, "Uhh, okay..."

My beef with Smeyers and her mad success stems primarily from my ridiculous, defensive feminism. I hate what she does between men and women in her story, or should I say, men and girls. I loathe the fact that 13 year olds and so many women's inner 13 year old want that kind of stalkery, possessive, "You're nothing without Edward" schlock.

I also hate her cavalier attitude about writing itself. The one interview I read with her, she was just glorying in her lack of education and came across as gleeful that she was able to pull one over on the stringent publishing world. "Heehee, I hardly passed English but this wasn't so hard!"

No, it's not that I'm comparing either my work or prospect of success (or lack thereof) to her. It's personal. :)