Thanks, chance. Last time I looked at Rice's website, that page was unavailable; maybe the site was overwhelmed with traffic.
Having read it, now... well, there are probably a lot of writers who think that their finished drafts are perfect and inviolate. In fact, I know a lot of them--they're unteachable. I tend to think that *my* latest oeuvres are perfect, at least for the first couple of months after I finish them.
It may be possible to get a piece "perfect," if beautiful writing is what you strive for. But even if you're a compulsive, obsessive, anal-retentive outliner (which I am not, and I don't know many writers who are) I can't imagine forcing a storyline into a completely smooth arc, with no lumps or bumps, the first time around.
I know I hate breaking the smooth transitions between paragraphs in order to straighten out a character who went off on a sudden bender, or to extract a subplot that didn't play out. But it's like ripping out stitches--if you don't do it, you're going to have a lump over your hip and the dress won't fit.
Ah well. It's not in my nature to get angry about such things. But thanks for finding it for me.
I'm looking for an article. A few months ago there was a minor online stink about an article written by Anne Rice, in which she stated that she wouldn't let editors change any of her prose, because she wrote it so perfectly the first time. Does anyone have a link to said article?
Jeez. And now that I've read the article, it sounds like it was written by the Comic Store Guy on Simpsons. The same combination of snootiness and cluelessness.
>All you aspiring writers? Please don't read that >AVH jeremiad and get depressed about the state >of publishing.
Hey listen, I was depressed for a solid month before Whine About Writing month began, and I've gone steadily uphill through the whole of March. Nothing like other people's problems to put your own in perspective. Whiners.
But be careful, Teresa, somebody might construe your reassurance as speaking ex cathedra, or leading us on with false hopes only so you can smash them cruelly, or something.
Another good bit by Neal Pollock about writers(and apropos, too!).
One Writer's Routine
My goodness, this has been bracing. I once told my husband I'd be lucky (and grateful) to get five figures on a first-novel advance.
150 grand? I could attend every Con in the country to promote my book and still have enough to live on for five years. Jeez.
The "Is it just me?" question reminded me of a cartoon I saw once; I think it was a Hallmark card. It was a picture of one car parked on top of another, and the caption said, "You may be suffering from PMS if people seem to be doing little things just to annoy you."
Patrick, Teresa, others: perhaps the salient point to remember here is, "Only those who DO things get criticized." I can't remember who said that.
I enjoyed the venting, too.
Ayse, that was my first thought, too, but given that it was considered appropriate to wear mourning every day for a year or more, I had to abandon that theory.
Warning: self pity ahead.
Alice Keezer said while I was writing because I wanted to, the idea rarely crossed my mind to try to SELL any of it. Whether it was publishable or not was irrelevant to me; I'd written it for myself, therefore, no one else could possibly want to read it.
Right now I'm trying to get back to that happy state, where I write because it amuses me. Every time I start trying to submit things I get so paralyzed and depressed about the overwhelming odds that I can't even READ, much less write, because my editor brain gets out of control and chokes my muse senseless.
The last time this happened, it took me a year to start writing again. I become like da Vinci, adding tiny strokes to the Mona Lisa over and over again instead of going on to something new. I could simply be going through a mild bout of depression, after all it is February, but it's tragic because I just finished my best novel yet and I have two other totally different projects sitting in the queue.
(To which my editor's mind sneers, "You can't write something totally different, even if you ever get published your audience won't follow you across genre lines."--See what I mean?)
Is fear of success is a real thing or just an 80's pop psychology term?
Mitch wrote: "Isaac Asimov showed how [...] The best shape for a door is rectangular, unless you're in microgravity...."
Does anyone know why submarine doors (in movies, anyway) are always ovoid, or at least with rounded corners? I assume it's so you can run a watertight gasket around the perimeter?
Melissa, I can't describe how validated I feel that you skip the prologues in submissions. I've been telling my writers' groups for years that nobody wants to read them.
I especially hate the "excerpt from a historical treatise" prologue that likes to squat in epic fantasy and space opera novels. The fact that C.J. Cherryh did it in _Cyteen_ is no excuse.
When I see one of these in an amateur writer's work, it's an 80% probability that the writer is basing the story on a role-playing game.
PicusFiche, I don't know if this helps, but the prologues I've seen that worked were told in real time; they were scenic and so lacked that ponderous "introductory notes" flavor.
Once--only once--I was forced to put a prologue in a story because it was one of those childhood trauma things. The hero's decision making processes depended upon what had happened back then, and no matter how hard I tried it wouldn't work smoothly into the story in mere conversation --there was too much of it, and the emotional impact too important.
The movie "Knockaround Guys," used a prologue in a similar way for a similar reason, and it worked (although I realize I may be the only person in America who liked that movie).
I have to weigh in and say that I don't believe "Native Americans are evil" was the theme or the intent of _Pet Sematary_ or _The Shining_. In Pet Sematary, the idea was that naive or selfish people were calling on ancient forces which they had no business disturbing. As best I can remember, the fact that the place had been an Indian burial ground was merely an Ominous Horn.
I never did figure out where the evil came from in The Shining, which weakened the book for me somewhat. When I last read it a few years ago, I sort of sketchily concluded that the hotel was full of evil because so many people had done evil things there, but then again, a lot of the scariest things are scary because there IS no explanation.
Regarding Card, I have only ever read Ender's Game, and although I enjoyed it immensely, I felt it had some sexist elements--see, Xopher, we all have our little betes noirs. However, I usually enjoy Card's essays and agree wholeheartedly with most of what he says about writing.
As far as King and the elitist snobs...
I've said for years that King is my patron saint. I've been less avid about following his horror works since Gerald's Game, but I greatly admired On Writing and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. That's partially a reflection of my changing tastes.
I got put through the wringer of Literary Criticism, too. In high school, I was told I would "outgrow" my interest in spec fic.
My college CW prof told me to my face I was a hack. It took me a few years to realize he was telling me, "You're too good to be wasting yourself on this stuff." I suppose it's a backhanded compliment, but it was ironic coming from a man who used to make a living writing for National Lampoon. His idols were Faulkner and Updike; the former I can't read and the latter I admire but don't much like. That professor got me so twisted up as to what was "right" that I dropped out of college and didn't write anything for a year.
Which is not to say I didn't learn anything from him; I did. But you are what you read, and when all you read is angst from the New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly, that gives you a very narrow strainer through which to force the maelstrom of a story. It took me nearly a year to incorporate the useful bits of Prof. W's classes so that I could apply them to my own work without guilt.
Extrapolating from what Kim Wells said, above: teaching writing and literary criticism would go down much more easily, and stick better, if the texts used to teach from were more accessible. Good writing is good writing, the "rules" apply to Danielle Steele just as they apply to Faulkner (I won't be drawn into a debate about Steele's quality; I've never read her). And Kim, for what it's worth I adore your scheme to teach all those diverse authors in the same class. A survey class of that type would be far more useful to the average college student than an intensive study of a single author. A student is bound to find something they like in that broader scope, and maybe fewer of them will come away with the idea that all "literature" is as heavy and dry as a bran muffin.
And for the record, when I went back to college three years later, one of the first things I wrote was for a persuasive writing class: "Why Stephen King is the Shakespeare of Our Time." I don't know whether they agreed with my conclusion, but my technique must've been sound, because it got an A.
In the middle of Teresa's long and very amusing story of how Bad Books happen to good people, she used this phrase:
"...where for Goreyesque reasons..."
It was a gem in a solid-gold setting. I was rolling on the floor of my cube.
>>I [thought] he had been too embarassed to tell his colleagues he'd enjoyed a book about vampires, and was trying to redraw the boundaries to make his pleasures more respectable.
I'm sure you're right, Harry. I always think the same criteria divides "erotica" from "porn."
Stephen King is my patron saint. Joss Whedon is my god, and M. Night Shyamalan is my confessor.
Amen.
Appropos of nothing, I just had to take a moment from my morning and vent about so-called editors who don't know the difference between passive and active voice, and can't understand why a posessive pronoun is more appropriate than a definite article in a given application.
And what, pray tell, is the point of having a style guide if our so-called editors feel free to discard it based on what they had for breakfast?
Grr.
>Sue said:
Lots of SF genre adventures ought to count towards techno-thrillers aiming at social change rather than restoring the status quo.
I'm glad you picked that up. It occured to me as I was writing the previous post, but I didn't want to segue further than I already had.
I've noticed that trend, too, and it's led me to suspect that the majority of SF writers/fans are of a liberal bent. Is this a coincidence? Are we drawn to spec fic because we're all optimists and want to believe that things can change, show the way so to speak? Or do we write the stuff about possible, positive change and everybody else thinks it's make-believe?
adamsj, In the interest of definition, I'd like to hear what, in your mind, makes Firestarter a liberal/centrist story, other than the professed alignment of the author?
Teresa: nevermind. It made sense in my head.
Alright, Teresa, now you're just being an editor.
"I want something new and fresh."
"Like what?"
"I don't know. You come up with it. You're the writer!"
"Well how am I to know what's new and fresh if I can't even find a definition of what's old and stale?"
It's ALL been done!
I second that, Anne, although I thought of author Banana Yoshimoto, and her stories of Japanese culture in which myth and fantasy are seamlessly merged with everyday modern concrete.
And I still think it's odd that most thrillers are conservative, in the deep sense -- not Republican-as-that-term-is-currently-understood, but Conservative.
Tom, somebody else mentioned techno-thrillers being about fear of change, but I think at heart all thrillers are like that.
All sarcasm aside, thrillers involve threat, crisis, as their driving conflict. Hero steps in, averts crisis, and the status quo is maintained.
Perhaps a liberal thriller would involve change being initiated, not merely crises being avoided. Maybe that's the key: we need a thriller in which the hero is attempting to initiate change for the better.... in which case the VP character is (from the tradition thriller hero's point of view), the villian....
It's all in the motivation. I must go and make notes to myself, now....
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