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I read an article today where she was showing the rejection letters she received after deciding to write crime books under the Galbraith pseudonym- there's hope for us all!
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I said something like:
I don't think it's surprising because editors get thousands of manuscripts a week. Those are filtered through and maybe they will get 5. Maybe less, but they will be manuscripts which are brilliant, and maybe one a month to take further. That one will go through acquisitions, costing, and maybe not make it if the marketing don't think it will sell (remember, they are not editors, don't go on brilliance of penmanship, they just go on whether it's marketable at that minute). So, if your manuscript is not brilliant, then you have no chance. If it is brilliant, then a small chance, if the editor you have sent it to likes your style and it has that certain something which is indefinable.
Having already got a track record her stuff will be much easier to sell to the buying public so therefore she will have a huge advantage in the costing, marketing stages.
So it really is about luck, and keeping at sending it out, after all, all the stories you marvel at are about people who wrote something marvellous (to some!) which was rejected multiple times before being accepted. you have to send it out multiple times to be rejected multiple times.
I was told, as a child to "hitch my wagon to a star". Was never quite sure how to do that but if you can figure it out perhaps there is hope for you as well.
Rather like a lot of sayings. I stitched part of my clothing in time but didn't save it totally disintegrating requiring far more than nine. And I watch a pot today and it soon boiled. Just turned up the gas. Have you ever had a bird in the hand? I'd prefer to see two in the bushes any time. (I'll stop there)
I read the start of Rowling's first detective book and the writing really isn't that good. I've seen better prose from MA Creative Writing students.
From the first para:
The buzz in the street was like the humming of flies. (Was it a hum or a buzz? The sounds are quite different) Photographers stood massed behind barriers patrolled by police, their long-snouted cameras poised, (pigs have snouts but the original simile was about insects – “proboscis” would be a better word) their breath rising like steam (a lazy simile; steam is hot. Better would be something with mist, fog or vapour)
I totally disagree. Proboscides are always flexible and in the public's mind at least, curled. I can't conceive of a worse description. Extended metaphor is not needed here. Whats more they aren't confined to insects - snouts can also be proboscides. Monkeys can have them.
I'd argue that the public in general don't have a firm concept of a proboscis. Certainly I'd never considered them curled, but then I'm not an entomologist. There was no mention of curl in the two dictionary definitions I've just seen. It's perfectly possible for an insect to have a rigid and straight proboscis.
>I can't conceive of a worse description. <
Really? "Toilet brush" would be a worse description. Or "French horn." I suggest that there are numerous worse options.
>Extended metaphor is not needed here. <
On what basis do you suggest this? The hum (or buzz) of insects is good simile to suggest prurient interest and congregated masses. To continue it would have been interesting and effective.
>Whats more they aren't confined to insects - snouts can also be proboscides. Monkeys can have them. <
Quite right, but an insect doesn't have a snout. It does have a proboscis. Moreover, there's a suggestion of "probe" in the word, and the "sc" sound is suitably slithery and alien.
Arguably, all metaphors/similes are open to accusations of not being 100% correlative. A snout, for example, might be said to be a means of respiration or snorting, whereas a proboscis is a means of silent parasitic alimentation – a better fit here.
But now I think about it, "French horn" is the funniest option.
Alas, I do tend to read so analytically. I might breeze over the occasional bit of mediocre writing if I'm enjoying the story, but a glut of mediocre writing in one place – indeed, on the very first page – kills my pleasure. Makes me feel like I'm reading with a red pen in hand.
"Reading for pleasure" for me means pleasure in the prose AND in the story. I accept that many readers don't care about or even notice the prose. I've met a few people who were shocked to hear that Dan Brown is not a hugely gifted stylist.
By the by, it works the other way, too. Sublimely clever prose is just tiring when it isn't attached to a compelling narrative. A really great writer does both equally well. (I'm not a really great writer – just a competent one.)
I agree, GG. Good writing should combine brilliant storytelling with the perfect vocabulary choice and just the right soupcon of fabulous, but fitting, metaphor.
I vaguely recall that the "Da Vinci expert" in the story is apparently stumped when presented with an "impenetrable code" which is actually just mirror writing and which most people know was a habit of Leonardo's. And one of the character's surnames translated as "red herring." He was a red herring. Not subtle.
Look at this line from the first paragraph of a bestseller: "Eighteen feet below the windswept surface legend says there is a complex network of caves." The grammar of this sentence suggests that legend is eighteen feet below the surface.
For example, I've just re-read Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island and I was astonished to pick up quite a number of blips.
He uses the word 'fetching' all the way through the book. There was another descriptive word (can't remember what it was off the top of my head) but he used it in consecutive paragraphs. Very sloppy editing. But - here's the thing - I hadn't noticed these blips the first time I read the book.
I've always been a Bill Bryson fan and these schoolboy errors saddened me. Ergo, I've become a far more critical reader since I became a serious/published writer.
"Eighteen feet below the windswept surface, legend says, there is a complex network of caves."
Main clause and sub-ordinate clause just need separating.
Simply putting a comma after 'surface' reinforces that legend is below the surface because the initial subordinate clause is one of description/location and grammatically should have the same subject as the dominant clause ('legend').
It's true that books these days aren't edited as strictly as they once were. But I think writers have a responsibility to know the grammar – at least at a functional level. If we don't know what's right, who does? (That's why I'm angry when I hear a BBC reporter say, "I'm sat outside the offices of . . .")
Someone once said to me: 'You never hear a mathematician say, "Oh, I'm not sure where the decimal point goes. I just go with my feeling."'
Proofreading is a different matter. My experience is that writers often can't see their own mistakes.