Archive for » July, 2008 «
Thanks to the blog 101 Reasons to Stop Writing, we have this lovely visual of the dumbassitude of queriers that don’t read the directions. Like the caption says, you spend all this time on your novel, pouring your heart, soul and whatever other pieces of you into it, only to flake out on the submission guidelines and get stamped as dimwit because you thought binding your work was pretty and if the agents really wanted to get back to you, they’d do it your way.
Here’s a hint. Take that little bit of extra time to read the submission guidelines of whomever you’re submitting to carefully. Make sure you have that SASE that they need (regardless of what you think of it). Make sure to query by their preferred method (not the one you think they should have). Send what they ask for and ONLY what they ask for. Really, if they want to read more, they’ll let you know.
Think I’m being melodramatic, am exaggerating or am just downright mean when I say that most POD books are, really, crap? Well, as we all know, math doesn’t lie. It can’t. If it did, 2 + 2 would equal five and Pythagoras would be out of a job. POD-dy Mouth comes through again with her stats from 2005. If you count up her 2005 selections in the sidebar, you get 49 selections total. A decent amount, right? The queries received that year? 5,959. Crunch some numbers and you get roughly .8% of the books that Girl On Demand received liked enough to recommended to others, not to mention could be considered worthy enough to be considered by an agent or editor.
That’s not even one percent of total submissions in that year. So, needless to say, the statistics are stacked greatly against POD authors, I almost want to say even more so than in a slush pile. The truth hurts but it should only make you strive to become a better writer. Stand out in the crowd of crap and make your work shine. Don’t be in such a rush to get your name on the cover of a book that ‘the’ is spelled ‘teh’ throughout and you just couldn’t be bothered with character name continuity. Granted this is only one woman’s opinion (which was held in rather high regard) but I’m wont to think the numbers would vary much between people.
If I may be so cliche, be the diamond in the rough.
First off, I just want to say that, as my regular blog readers know, I’m not one for rants, at least in the traditional blogging fashion. This one isn’t going to be one of those but it’ll be closer than what I’ve come to before.
The only qualification you really need to be able to call yourself a writer is to write. Really, it is that simple. No degree required or skills in a particular job field. You just need to write. Now, there are varying degrees to that. There are hobby writers, there are professional writers, there are striving-to-be-professional writers (i.e., me) and a whole bunch of slats in between. You get to call yourself a writer if you write, and write constantly. But whatever you do, don’t consider yourself a serious writer if you’re unwilling to take the criticisms of others. It comes with the territory. Every writer pours their heart and soul into their work. Does it suck to have your baby beaten to a pulp? Of course but a serious writer will take what those people are saying, understand that they’re not inflammatory (those that are are obviously so) and look at their work with different eyes. Everyone is capable of improvement if you’re willing to accept the fact that you’ll always have room to improve.
So considering the only hardcore qualification for writing is to actually write (I know writers that are self-taught, never took a class in their life as well as those like myself with the degrees in this or that), it irks me when people force upon others just how they’re qualified to be doing what they’re doing; how their day job or their pretty unrelated hobby plays into their writing.
Being an avid reader does not qualify you as a writer. Reading and writing, two very different things. Takes a lot more to write the book than it does to read it. Does being an avid reader qualify that person to be a good book reviewer or critiquer? Sure. You don’t need a degree or be a student in anything to do that. The more you read, the more you learn what works and what doesn’t, what’s cliche and what isn’t and so on. You’re good to go. And you don’t even need to read “the classics” to be qualified, either. Honestly, I’m not a fan of Joyce, Hemingway and Steinbeck make me narcoleptic and I wanted to set Wuthering Heights on fire. Doesn’t make me any less qualified to do anything. It just doesn’t make me a pretentious snot in thinking that I have to read that stuff in order to understand real writing. Please.
I’ve been thinking about it lately and I don’t think ‘Diamond Crier’ really represents my work since it took a turn for the sardonic. Don’t get me wrong. I do like that title but it better represented the work when it was more on the serious side. It really is a trivial thing to be worrying about, especially at this stage of the game but as I read more and more agent blogs and how they talk about accurately portraying your work in your query, I can’t help but think on it (and convince myself I’m doing it as a means of preparation and not procrastination). It’ll remain Diamond Crier for now, just for reference’s sake but by query it’ll have a title that more accurately depicts the story.
I’m thinking ‘Ugly Orange Dress.’ For now, anyway. See, in the Diamond Crier world, they have a week-long festival called Western Wane that celebrates, for simplicity’s sake, the autumnal equinox. It’s the end of the harvest, the sun becoming less and less present in the sky, the brightness of the western sky dwindles quicker . . . and so on. During the public festivities there’s a particular method of dress that’s meant to mimic the setting sun. No, not waning clothing! The women wear full dresses in their sunset shade of choice while men wear matching vests, cumber buns, ties and other standout accessories.
If you haven’t checked out a sunset recently, these aren’t exactly subtle colors. They’re very vibrant and very pretty up in the sky. I’ll even say that I do like to wear orange and yellow tops. The shirt I’m wearing right now could be deemed fluorescent salmon. I like bright colors, especially in the summer. But only in shirts. Anything more and it’s a little much. The women wear dresses that are head to toe vibrant, rich, single color pieces that while represent a sunset symbolically, look rather . . . ick on the person. Well, most of them anyway. They have choices of yellow, orange, deep red and violet (the latter two for the dark end of the set). Before Sabina got to the Giver’s castle, her mother dressed her in yellow to “match” her hair. Once she got to the castle it was a rich, pumpkin color orange. Can you imagine that in a whole dress???
The thing is, that’s the point. They’re not fashion statements (unless you’re of a much higher class). It’s a symbolic ritual.
I think your hair is smoking.
I’m sure there’s been a time in everyone’s life where they’ve piled more onto their plate than they can eat (why do all of my analogies center around food???). Usually it’s not until you’ve added that fifth spoonful of potatoes when you realize that you’ve chipped the edge of the china and you’re going to need a doggie tarp. It doesn’t matter what it’s in; whether your job, your writing or your social life, everyone’s taken on more than they can handle at one point or another. It’s inevitable and most people take it as a learning experience after they’ve been doused with water.
However, I think writers are prone to burn outs of a different variety. Can we take on more than we can bear? Sure. It was one of the reasons why I took down the Boddie blog and the Dawn serial. I was losing focus on what was really important to me and expending my energy in places that shouldn’t have been getting it. I was burning myself out but not on the writing I really wanted to do but on the side projects that I was half committed to but I’d saddled myself with anyway.
To quote Miss Snark who was quoting someone else–
There’s an interesting article in the recent NewYork about burn out. The theory is burnout doesn’t come from over work. It comes from unrealistic expectations and a reduced sense of effectiveness. (Thus social workers with a busy caseload burn out not because they are busy but because they feel their work isn’t accomplishing anything in the long run.)
The wealth of information the Snarkives has. This article discusses cliches not in terms of genre but just everyday usage. While this piece is focusing on overused cliche terms in print media, I think it’s entirely relevant when it comes to writing.
Usually when people think of cliches and fiction they think of “farm boy turns kingdom savior” or “portal to a new world” or “boy on a quest to find X” or whatever else you can think of. It’s what springs to mind first. But I think there are far more detrimental cliches that are used in writing that, if morphed into something more original, might possibly make the genre cliches appear less cliche. They can be sneaky like that.
I’m talking about just your average, every day sayings. “She rolled her eyes” is a statement that appears probably in every book at least once. I’d hazard a guess, though, that it’s in there multiple times. It’s almost a safety net. You know how the character is feeling even if you’re not in their head when you see a statement like that. Unfortunately it can become a little redundant and picture quite psychotic if that’s all anyone’s doing.
Another saying that makes me want to rip my hair out is “he turned on his heels.” OMFG STOP! Try turning on your heels! Go head. Try it! Most of the time I see this the character doing the heel turning is spinning away in some kind of defiance or anger. Go try and turn on your heels PLURAL, NOT the balls of your feet (which would make a load more sense) and maintain a defiant, angered poise while you’re at it. Doesn’t quite work when you try it, does it? I picture the number of times Snape turned on his heels and I giggle every time because 1) spinning on both heels to face the opposite direction would land you directly on your face and 2) spinning on only one makes you look a bit like a ballerina. Imagine if it were a woman in stilettos! Yikes! Hope she has insurance!
