First time snark 'round these parts.

[christraven.livejournal.com]

 Okay, so I've gotten quite a few laughs out of this community, and I've enjoyed much of the snark.  I figured it was about time to give something back, so I decided to take some samples from Pat Walsh's book 78 Reasons Why Your Book May Never Be Published, and 14 Reasons Why It Just Might, and post it up here as a kind of comparison/contrast exercise.  Hopefully it gives you as much entertainment as everyone else here has given me. 

 

These are just the first 25 out of the 78 reasons (since I'm both lazy and didn't want to make this post too obnoxiously long), and I can pick out quite a few that can be applied to our favorite Little Snowflake.  How many can you spot, and why?  

1. The Number One Reason Your Book Will Never Be Published Is Because You Have Not Written It. 
2. Your Book Is Not Good Enough 
3. You Do Not Revise Your Book, Or You Will Not Revise It Again. 
4. You Think Too Highly Of Yourself
5. You Think You Are A Natural
6. You Think Writing Is Easy
7. You Listen To False Praise
8. You Do Not Know What You Are Talking About
9. You Do Not Care About Language
10. You Cannot Tell A Story
11. You Preach
12. You Do Not Realize That Nobody Cares
13. You Are A Copycat
14. You Do Not Have Style
15. You Have Too Much Style
16. You Do Not Kill Your Little Darlings (this one is originally in reference to the pithy little sayings that a would-be author might use, but I think it can be applied to LKH well enough....  :-)....)
17. You Use Bad Metaphors And Similes
18. You Sacrifice Clarity for "Art"
19. You Do Not Know Grammar
20. You Do Not Care About Syntax
21. You Do Not Know Enough Vocabulary
22. You Read Your Writing Aloud Too Much
23. You Have A Tin Ear For Dialogue
24. You Do Not Know Your Audience
25. You Do Not Trust Your Audience

Enjoy!

Comments

[manekikoneko.livejournal.com]

This could be a list of 24 things that LKH has been published in spite of, and one we wish were true.

[sharkbytes.livejournal.com]

You Listen To False Praise

WORD. While there's no accounting for taste, there seems to be a wealth of authors that have positive encouragement teams that do a lot more harm than good. A harsh critic can be your best friend.

[manekikoneko.livejournal.com]

I'm constantly asking my friends to be more critical of my writing. "I can't change anything if you don't tell me to change anything!"

[wellowned.livejournal.com]

me too!!! i swear...think of the trees that would be saved if someone actually offered real criticism.

and then the author actually *took* the advice.

[calenture.livejournal.com]

You Read Your Writing Aloud Too Much

Forgive me if it's incredibly obvious, but why is this a bad thing?

[christraven.livejournal.com]

It's not obvious at all. It took me a read or two to try to figure out what the author was talking about.

Mr. Walsh's reasoning is that you end up getting stuck with a kind of voice for each character and each scenario, when the reality is that everyone who reads the book besides the author will take it a different way. The 'voice' the author gets stuck in tends to make the writing stilted and stuffy.

Personally, I don't see it, but then again, I'm not published on a regular basis. Or at all, as of late.

[hellfire82.livejournal.com]

as in...

that tight wet white picket fence just did it for me, making me scream and spill, and then i had to relearn how to breathe?

oh yeah. i went there. :D

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

This is actually wrong.

Walsh was a successful editor, but as a fiction writer not so much. Maybe he needs to read his work out loud more.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

The Number One Reason Your Book Will Never Be Published Is Because You Have Not Written It.

She's good on this one, though.

[mystickiwi.livejournal.com]

I found 24 that can apply to LKH!

[genchaos.livejournal.com]

What about the friggin' 'noises too primitive to be screams' during sex? She's guilty as sin of reusing that phrase in different series.

[mystickiwi.livejournal.com]

with the puppy pile!

[christraven.livejournal.com]

True, but the only association with the word "book" that I give to anything by LKH is the fact that it has a binding and a stupid picture on the cover. Everything inside is just dead trees.

[cicipsychobunny.livejournal.com]

How about being kissed like he was drowning of thirst and you were the finest of wines?

Actually, if I never have to read another paragraph about Richard's eyes being the exact colour of chocolate, I may die happy.

[daphne-gateau.livejournal.com]

*flails* Please no. Not the puppy pile!

;)

[nightangel486.livejournal.com]

ditto for nathaniel's lavender/lilac eyes and micha's
kitty-kat eyes

[easol.livejournal.com]

And Asher's husky eyes, and JC's sapphire-or-some-jewel-shit-like-that eyes, or Belle's poisoned honey eyes... who are we leaving out?

[easol.livejournal.com]

The bowing spine in the puppy pile!

[crimsonpacific.livejournal.com]

Has anyone ever poisoned their honey to see what colour it turns? DOES it turn colour? What if you mix in a poison that dissolves the honey?

More fun?

[crimsonpacific.livejournal.com]

Any chance of you *cough* popping a few more up there?

[easol.livejournal.com]

Personally, no. I suppose she means "dark golden," but unless it was a LOT of poison I imagine it would look like... honey.

[cicipsychobunny.livejournal.com]

And anyone wearing a shirt the exact same colour of their eyes!

[moonsinger.livejournal.com]

Only 23, she has complained way too much about how hard it is too sit down and write for 6 to apply to her.

Re: More fun?

[christraven.livejournal.com]

Mmmmmaybe. I'll have to dig up the book again - I loaned it out, unfortunately.

[brightlyiburn.livejournal.com]

The problem isn't in thinking you're a natural.

The problem is in thinking that just because you're a natural it means that you never have to work at it.

I have an artist friend who is a natural. Undeniably so. At 11 she was amazing. Her ability with watercolors was very impressive. And that was before she really took classes.
After ten years, a lot of classes, and a lot of -work-, she is so good it's almost painful.

A while ago she showed me this sketch she'd done of a man riding a horse. It was done from a behind, slightly to the left angle that in and of itself was quite amazing. Then she told that it had taken her a long time to do, because she didn't have a picture of a horse to look at.
I'm still trying to get over the fact that she drew it without having to look at a horse.

[brightlyiburn.livejournal.com]

This is why the art student in me gets the urge to slit her wrists whenever I read LKH's work.

Three guesses as to why the rest of me wants to slit my wrists whenever I read her work.

[easol.livejournal.com]

Or a few shades darker! (Seriously, whenever LKH says this, I keep imagining Anita holding handfuls of paint colour strips, like the ones they have at hardware stores)

[easol.livejournal.com]

Exactly! Very well put.

Even if you have natural talent AND ability, it amounts to exactly jackshit unless you work at it.

[her-schism.livejournal.com]

you forgot about “like so much meat”

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

BSO (book-shaped object)

[wonderbink.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, I borrowed that book from work back when I worked at Big Corporate Bookstore. (Borrowing books was one of the perks that kept me hooked for as long as I worked there . . . ) I really liked it and it did give me quite a few things to think about.

I've at least got a manuscript to work from now, so maybe I should get my hands on a copy of that book to figure out what to do next . . . ;)

[bludflower.livejournal.com]

I agree. If you don't read your work aloud you're more likely to miss clunky sentences and stiff, unnatural dialogue. How do you learn to avoid the tin ear if you're not listening to the way it sounds?

[christraven.livejournal.com]

While I agree that reading your work aloud is a good thing, I think Walsh was trying to say that reading it too much (wherever that line of "too much" may be) is a hindrance.

I'll have to find the book to read exactly what he meant. Of course, I don't think LKH reads her work at all much less out loud, so that rule can probably be tossed out.

[bludflower.livejournal.com]

The relearning to breath thing has irked the living daylights out of me since GP.

Hey, what about the unnamed spot no bigger than a silver dollar or the fact that Anita can *so* taste her own pulse at the back of her throat when she's scared... EVERY time she's scared.

[easol.livejournal.com]

What does a pulse taste like?

[bludflower.livejournal.com]

According to LKH, it tastes like candy. I wouldn't mind tasting candy in a stressfull moment...Unless they were black jelly beans. XP

[moontear.livejournal.com]

Mmrgle, how about, "I widened my eyes at him." I know she doesn't use it as much as the others, but I saw it more and more frequently in the last few books. Haha, for some reason, it really grated on my nerves.

[moontear.livejournal.com]

Or, excuse me, "I gave him wide eyes," is what I think it is.

[quizzicalsphinx.livejournal.com]

I have a tendency to read my dialogue aloud to see if it flows naturally. This has led to much amusement on the part of the husband, who, for the first year of our marriage, thought I talked on the telephone in funny accents while I was supposed to be writing.

[christraven.livejournal.com]

Actually, I just found the book, and looked up the specific passage concerning out-loud reading of one's own work. To quote:

"The inflection of voice hides a multitude of sins by emphasizing the colorful bits and glossing over deficiencies. Specifically, writers who tend to read their prose aloud tend to overstuff their sentences with prepositional phrases and needless words. Spoken ideas need more air to sink in; written words do not because the reader's mind goes at its own pace rather than the speaker's. The exercise may be useful in the end stages of revision to ensure dialogue sounds authentic and the flow of the prose is even. It should not be used when writing early drafts."