Log In

Home
    - Create Journal
    - Update
    - Download

LiveJournal
    - News
    - Paid Accounts
    - Contributors

Customize
    - Customize Journal
    - Create Style
    - Edit Style

Find Users
    - Random!
    - By Region
    - By Interest
    - Search

Edit ...
    - Personal Info &
      Settings
    - Your Friends
    - Old Entries
    - Your Pictures
    - Your Password

Developer Area

Need Help?
    - Lost Password?
    - Freq. Asked
      Questions
    - Support Area



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]issendai
2009-04-19 03:02 am UTC (link)
As slush goes, it's not bad at all. The dialogues need severe pruning--too much ping-ponging between speakers for too little information--and the characterization needs help. I'm not buying for a minute that any doctor on the planet would say what Dr. Graves did unless the story is about Chloe's suit to have him delicensed. And surely there's a less laborious way of establishing that Chloe is a damp, miserable creature. On top of all that, it's in present tense, which is usually an arty way of making the action fresh and immediate... but the whole point of Chloe's personality is that nothing about her is fresh and immediate. It just makes you feel exactly how slowly time is passing.

Yeah, she's not unpublished because agents don't appreciate her undiscovered genius. She's not awful; there's something there. But there's not enough of it there yet.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]chibikaijuu
2009-04-19 03:22 am UTC (link)
It just makes you feel exactly how slowly time is passing.

I actually liked it for that - but there is absolutely no way I could stand an entire novel of it.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]issendai
2009-04-19 03:46 am UTC (link)
It's definitely a small-doses effect.

It reminds me of a movie of Iphegenia, which starts with sailors shuffling about the beach listlessly, waiting for the winds to start up so they can get underway. FOR FIVE MINUTES. You never know just how long five minutes is until you spend it staring at the screen, rotting of boredom, while bored sailors shuffle about getting sunburned on a boring beach as the director counts all the awards he's going to get for depicting boredom so well.

(In a fine moment of irony, I remember nothing else about the movie except the boring beginning.)

(Reply to this)(Parent)


(Read comments) -

 
   
Privacy Policy - COPPA
Legal Disclaimer - Site Map