Y’know what, fuck it. I’m tired of trying things for bitches who criticize, but do nothing else, to dump on me for it. How books do you have published, Snow Pea? How many books have you been paid to work on, Bob Ducca? How many have you developed, hmmm?
I doubt you have the slightest clue how any work starts out, or how even the very good titles look like shit at first. When you can write like Shakespeare without long, long processes of editing and feedback, then feel free to come back and criticize me.
I take a certain amount of care with my forum posts, although not a whole lot. I don’t obsess. I do go back and correct errors. I often look at them after they’re posted–they look different–and go back and edit them, if there’s time. It’s not that I think that that particular post is so important, it’s that I don’t want to let myself get into sloppy habits, all too easy to fall into, hard to pull out of.
Nobody would have cared about your crappy writing, OP, if you had either 1) kept it to yourself in the first place, or 2) been open to receiving constructive criticism. Instead you were an overly-defensive douchecanoe. I can therefore say, without compunction, that most fanfiction written by 17 year olds is of higher quality, enjoyability, and readability than the dreck that flows from your pen to the paper. Your words rain down upon your readers as gracefully as sparrowshit plops down from an oak tree onto the heads of innocent children below. This thread will forever serve as a glorious testament to your stubborn, willful idiocy. And if you ever get a literary work published, I’ll eat my hat.
What’s annoyed me about the posts is the underlying attitude. However Smiling Bandit, your OP here makes me think that it’s not something you can snap out of. Far be it from me to diagnose you with anything, since I’m not remotely qualified. But I really think you could use a shrink right about now. And I also think it’s not likely to do you much good to expose yourself to ridicule the way you’ve done in this thread and the one about your writing in Cafe Society.
I’m not the one with the fantasy that I have the talent or skills to be a professional editor or writer. That being said, I’ve had several fiction and creative non-fiction pieces published in various lit mags, and I’ve sold a few non-fiction articles.
Holy shit, he’s THIRTY?! Wow. I had him pegged at 20-21 tops.
Oh, and that bolded line? Not true, at all. Now some writers write shitty first drafts. Others do hardly any revising at all. In any case be assured that by the time it gets to an editor or an agent, or in fact the eyes of any other person besides the writer, it doesn’t look like shit at all.
You’re coming across [analogy alert!] as someone who writes the way I play the piano. I don’t practice, I don’t take lessons. About last January I sat down and picked out the melody of “Root Beer Rag” very slowly and painfully, and with lots of errors, although it helps that it’s in C. (Maybe not, but it is the way I did it.) I noodled around with it for maybe a week, and got a little better and a little faster, but nowhere near perfect. And then I haven’t touched the piano since then.
If I sat down in front of a group of accomplished musicians today and said, “Hey, critique my musical ability,” and then proceeded to play “Root Beer Rag” as I remember it (and probably much slower than even the last time I did it), that would be similar to what you’re doing in posting your writing here and sending it off to agents. In other words, I haven’t practiced, and anyone, even without musical ability, would know it.
That’s about where your writing is. You haven’t practiced. Maybe you could do it if you tried, but you refuse to try. But yet, you’re showing it to people.
I am a gooder speller than all of them said editors so I should get the job, if it weren’t for you bitches. In other words: You’re suspect! Yeah, you! I don’t know what your reputation is in this town, but after the shit you tried to pull today you can bet I’ll be looking into you. Now the business we have, heretofore, you can speak with my aforementioned attorney. Good day, gentlemen; and until that day comes, keep your ear to the grindstone.
Or not, as the case may be. It’s just a shot in the dark.
Thanks; I still don’t know the rules and when I first tried to reply here I opened a new tab, went on Fark and saw my hotmail account. And I’ve altered the spelling on this post several times and also had a few mind-fucks several times. I’m probably shit or average, so bear that in mind.
I discovered a few days ago that my spellchecked, proof-read by teacher resume had a glaring misspelling I cannot understand how we missed. It was QUALIFICATONS. Yes, I misspelled the all-capped heading for my qualifications, which, being secretarial included catching errors like QUALIFICATONS.
All I can figure is a slip on the keyboard between the spellcheck and saving.
I’ve sent out dozens with this misspelling too. No wonder I’m not getting any callbacks.