From a message board I frequent, from a poster who sounds new (at least I haven't seen the name before) and whom I will leave anonymous for obvious reasons:
how on earth can people communicate effectively with such miserable spelling
They can't. They put the onus on the reader - 'I don't want to take the time to figure it out, *you* do the work' which predisposes me against them from the start.
Good writers, above all, have the ability of finding exactly the right word, and to encase it in paragraphs of the right length amidst sentences of the right rhythm, to create something that resonates in me long after I read those words.
'many people could think up a good story'
Yup, meet 'em down the boozer every night. But this... entity obviously has no concept of how much work is needed to go from a good idea to a good book; it can't even _envision_ all those steps of making the story coherent, and shaping it, picking up interesting settings and characters on the way, and forming all into a new unity, and then going and revising and doing the same thing until it *sparkles*. Only then do you have a product publishers *might* be interested in. It's a lot of work. Even when it's going as well as my WIR, which will be all wrapped up and sent out within four months from conception to polishing. (One of those rare moments where everything comes together - don't remind me of the stack of mss under my bed...) To get to the point where I _can_ churn out a book in four months and know that it is good, I spent more like fourteen years learning to write, in fits and starts, and I'm still not published.
It sounds as if this entity thinks it's just a question of an amusing story and writing it down. Sorry. You can't even *see* 'publishable' from there.
They can't. They put the onus on the reader - 'I don't want to take the time to figure it out, *you* do the work' which predisposes me against them from the start.
Good writers, above all, have the ability of finding exactly the right word, and to encase it in paragraphs of the right length amidst sentences of the right rhythm, to create something that resonates in me long after I read those words.
'many people could think up a good story'
Yup, meet 'em down the boozer every night. But this... entity obviously has no concept of how much work is needed to go from a good idea to a good book; it can't even _envision_ all those steps of making the story coherent, and shaping it, picking up interesting settings and characters on the way, and forming all into a new unity, and then going and revising and doing the same thing until it *sparkles*. Only then do you have a product publishers *might* be interested in. It's a lot of work. Even when it's going as well as my WIR, which will be all wrapped up and sent out within four months from conception to polishing. (One of those rare moments where everything comes together - don't remind me of the stack of mss under my bed...) To get to the point where I _can_ churn out a book in four months and know that it is good, I spent more like fourteen years learning to write, in fits and starts, and I'm still not published.
It sounds as if this entity thinks it's just a question of an amusing story and writing it down. Sorry. You can't even *see* 'publishable' from there.
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