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Avocado ([info]white_serpent) wrote in [info]otf_wank,
@ 2009-04-17 16:05:00


Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Entry tags:authorwank, elitism, publishing, special snowflake syndrome

But why isn't your book selling?
It's all the fault of literary agents, who are single-handedly destroying literature everywhere!

Excerpt:

The substantial and nearly unassailable wall that separates you from us has been under construction for decades. You can find the names of its architects and gatekeepers on your telephone-callers list, and in your email in-box. They are the literary agents—that league of intellectual-property purveyors who bring you every new manuscript you ever see, those men and women who are so anxious to gain access to the caverns of treasure they believe you sit upon like some great golden goose that they would likely hack one another’s heads off were they not united by one self-serving mission: to ensure that quality fiction never hits your desk.

Just a tiny bit of entitlement, elitism, and self-delusion.

And some responses...


(Read comments) - (Post a new comment)


[info]agilebrit
2009-04-18 06:14 pm UTC (link)
Wait a minute...

Is she pitching this thing to agents already? Because, first of all, it's less than 21,000 words, which is novella territory and barely halfway to novel-length. Secondly, it's listed as "incomplete." So, if she's pitching a book that's not done yet to agents, that's kind of the epitome of Doing It Wrong.

Someone needs to sell this woman a clue. Also, badly-written book is badly-written. Less telling, more showing, plz. And present tense? No. Some writers can pull it off. She's not one of them.

*reads further* Omigawd:

It has reached the point where Rita wears the same clothes almost every time she leaves the house now, even though she detests the idea that her mother is still influencing what she wears--and even though when Elvie made the comment, Rita weighed almost fifteen pounds less than she does right now (okay, maybe twenty) so the whole ensemble is getting a little snug as well as a little worn, and even though Elvie said what she did only in the context of trying to persuade Rita to apply for some job that Elvie had decide would help Rita assert her independence, so it probably meant nothing in the first place.

DUDES. I can haz full stop, plz? I mean, okay, I've got one character who is the King of Run-On Sentences, because his brain goes a bazillion miles an hour and he never met a period he liked, but damn. I don't usually do that in the narrative unless I'm deep into POV. She's not doing that here, she's just got a 112-word sentence for no apparent reason.

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]fishies
2009-04-18 10:20 pm UTC (link)
That sentence needs more help then a period or two can give it, sadly.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]agilebrit
2009-04-19 11:20 pm UTC (link)
That character needs more help than losing weight can give her as well.

I mean, there's so much wrong with just this first chapter. I don't mind a character who's kind of a loser (I have one who's a basket case, myself), but he or she has to have an endearing trait or two to make up for it, y'know? Her protag just...doesn't have that.

Also, describing her by having her look in the mirror: FAIL. I couldn't believe that a writer who's had three books published would make such a newbie mistake.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]kosaginolegion
2009-04-18 10:44 pm UTC (link)
Somehow, I missed that that was one sentence.

Someone needs to tell her that she can't win the Bulwer-Lytton award unless it's the first sentence in the novel.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]tarash
2009-04-18 11:53 pm UTC (link)
As far as I can tell, NOTHING happens in the first six chapters (yeah, I'm a bored masochist). If that's literary fiction, I'll take genre fiction, kthx.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]vzg
2009-04-19 12:59 am UTC (link)
That sounds like some of the more chatty girls at my school on the phone after a night of drinking and ~drama~.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]evilsqueakers
2009-04-19 02:25 am UTC (link)
Or a lobotomized Dr. Who character.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


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