I will not read your f*****g script!

[Teresa Edgerton]

Or practice law.

 

[Vertigo]

Bun fight! Yeah!

 

[Ursa major]

So, now I am no longer a studio engineer I should start investigating neurosurgery...?

It seems only fair, given how many times we've picked your brains.


(Not that I'm suggesting the first neurosurgical instrument you buy should be a pick. You have to walk before you can run. )

 

[Peter Graham]

Which is why it's important to keep on writing and submitting new things over the years. It increases the odds that some time for some agent, your book will be one of the handful.

Many of that top 3-5% don't do that, which is a big reason why they are never picked up by an agent.

I entirely agree. Being able to write well still isn't enough. You have to catch the zeitgeist, or at least be in at the start of the Next Big Thing. I suspect - and you will know better - that understanding trends, business and the timelines for publication are also invaluable to an aspiring author.

Regards,

Peter

 

[David Evil Overlord]

I entirely agree. Being able to write well still isn't enough. You have to catch the zeitgeist, or at least be in at the start of the Next Big Thing. I suspect - and you will know better - that understanding trends, business and the timelines for publication are also invaluable to an aspiring author.

Regards,

Peter

Read something where the writer was wondering how many Boy Wizard tales flooded the slush piles after Harry Potter became the Next Big Thing.

Alas, it is very easy to spot the Last Big Thing.

 

[Hex]

And yet vampires went on and on and ON.

 

[David Evil Overlord]

Quick, somebody drive a stake through their cold, dark little sparkly hearts!

 

[Nik]

Ploughing a lonely furrow before I discovered Chrons, I fell into some terribly bad writing habits. Several apt critiques dragged me kicking and screaming into compliance...

I've actually finished writing a 150k-word book, but I can still hardly believe I spent 18 months on it. I began a sequel before the enormity of the task ahead halted me...

At the moment, I'm not writing. Period. Partly, this is because I can't currently string words together in even a half-satisfactory manner. If they're not good enough for a scribbled draft, the tale's going no-where fast. With luck and time, my urge to write may return, where-upon I hope to 'catch the wave' again.

 

[Jake Reynolds]

Nik, the only way anyone can improve is to write. Anything else, while it might be helpful, won't make you a better writer (though it might make you start to notice how you can improve). Just write, write and write some more.

Also, 18 months on 150k? Geez, I've spent 20 years learning how to write, and I'm not even good yet!

 

[Kaldaur]

The only time I stop writing is when I'm editing a project. Otherwise I'd go mental. I agree with Jake: you have to keep plowing forward.

 

[TomS]

Read something where the writer was wondering how many Boy Wizard tales flooded the slush piles after Harry Potter became the Next Big Thing.

Alas, it is very easy to spot the Last Big Thing.

It is also easy to create the Next Big Thing. Just tell the people what it is. Trust me, it works.

When I first heard of Harry Potter I thought, "Oh, here's the thing I'm supposed to like. I can't read it, it's too popular." I tried giving it a chance and couldn't bear it. I gave it a second chance on my own terms much later and I liked it. Now I'm a fan.

But none of it would have happened if someone at some point, probably early on in the life of the franchise, hadn't suggested that it should be popular. Never underestimate the power of marketing. And sheep.

It helps that the author is talented too.

 

[Jennifer Cthulus]

First up, why does so much writing on the internet, even articles on sophisticated sites, seem to read like a Joss Whedon character's internal monologue?

Thank you! I can't tell you how long I've been bugged by the exact same question. When even Newsweek is ending sentences with "... not so much", one begins to wonder how exactly Joss Whedon ended up being the architect of our language. James Joyce would have been a more interesting choice, wouldn't he? Or even Tom Robbins.

Still, makes an interesting point regarding the mainstreaming of SFF.

Getting back to the subject of the thread, I thought that the article made some excellent points, and not just regarding writing, either. I've been a web developer by trade for well over a decade and hang out on web developer message boards as a result. For years, I've seen people new to the business post on such boards with links to sites that they've developed and requests for "brutally honest" criticism. Like Olsen in the article, I would still bend over backwards trying to couch my criticism within praise for the things that they did right and general encouragement. Only once in all those years of reviewing people's websites did the poster reply with something like, "wow; thanks so much for actually being honest with me, I really appreciate it." Every single other time (easily dozens of occasions) the poster just vanished off the board forever. I've even joked that actually providing constructive criticism was guaranteed to kill threads ostensibly soliciting the same.

Looks like writers encounter exactly the same thing. Interesting to see Olsen, and contributors to this thread, examining the phenomenon and its causes. I tend to agree with the observation that, regardless of how honest people ask reviewers to be, people soliciting reviews (of either their writing or their code) are actually just wanting a pat on the head, and are possibly specifically requesting honesty only because they believe that their work is genuinely amazing on its own merits simply by virtue of the time and energy expended in its creation.

 

[Vertigo]

I've just been reading about ambiguity in writing, both unintended (usually) or intended and they provided an example of deliberate ambiguity from Disraeli that seems rather pertinent to this discussion and hints at how long it has been a problem for writers.

And the nineteenth-century statesman and novelist Benjamin Disraeli had a standard response to all would-be authors who sent him unsolicited manuscripts:

Many thanks; I shall lose no time in reading it.

Hehe

 

[TomS]

Would ending a book with a question that doesn't get answered be considered ambiguity? Couldn't it be seen as letting the reader make up their own mind?

 

[Vertigo]

Ah not the kind of ambiguity Tom. More this sort of thing

John and James walked into the empty room.

"Sit down," he said.

Who said? But done deliberately, as in Disraeli's example that can be interpreted in two ways, it can be very neat.

 

[JoanDrake]

[

As you say, what writer doesn't? In fact when they do stop worrying, they maybe tend to get a little arrogant and their quailty can often fall. Think about complaints along those lines with authors like Heinlein; his latter work became severely self-indulgent and, as I understand it, he wouldn't let editors take stuff out.

Well, since it was Heinlein, he was probably right

I don't know how true it is, but I recently read an anecdote about Margaret Atwood at a dinner party when a brain surgeon told her that as he was just about to retire he was going to write a book. "What a coincidence," she says. "I was thinking of taking up brain surgery."

Funny quote, but then again what if it was a book on brain surgery?

It is also easy to create the Next Big Thing. Just tell the people what it is. Trust me, it works.

When I first heard of Harry Potter I thought, "Oh, here's the thing I'm supposed to like. I can't read it, it's too popular." I tried giving it a chance and couldn't bear it. I gave it a second chance on my own terms much later and I liked it. Now I'm a fan.

But none of it would have happened if someone at some point, probably early on in the life of the franchise, hadn't suggested that it should be popular. Never underestimate the power of marketing. And sheep.

It helps that the author is talented too.

I like this, I'm in another group run by a regularly published author who says that the majority of authors (including him) are actually successful more because they were either lucky or know how to promote their work as well as they write it. To illustrate, he always uses Tom Clancy (and I apologise if you think Clancy is Shakespeare, I will admit he once described an F-22 with the same detail and love that Flaubert gave to Madame Bovary) who, he says, is mainly known today because Ronald Reagan said he was his favorite author.

 

[Hex]

Would ending a book with a question that doesn't get answered be considered ambiguity? Couldn't it be seen as letting the reader make up their own mind?

Charlotte Bronte did that in Villette and it annoys me every time I read it. Gah.