Can't We All Just Be Equal (Without Jumping Up & Down About Your Own Little Cause)?

[ahunter3]

There are two recurrent and interrelated comments or lines of thought that have cropped up quite often over the years in which I've been trying to do this:

• What is it that you hope to accomplish? What's your goal, your ideal outcome, if your efforts were to succeed?
• Why do we need to identify and "have liberation" for this or that specified

Comments

[old_cutter_john]

Well writ! I agree with everything! And as you may know, I believe in treating children as autonomous persons. I even came pretty close myself, as a parent. (My daughter hated it

[musicman]

I think you are very much on track with your comments, old_cutter_john.

ahunter3's message is getting lost in the anger, and recriminations against society as a whole. Some anger should appear in the book, but even there, it needs to be one of many themes, otherwise it will be diatribe that no one will want to read.

A story is not a lecture is not a rant. Every author thinks her work is so important that the publishers and their minions, the editors should drop everything and kowtow to this marvelous story that arrives over the transom, or in hands of an agent. It does not work that way. If it arrives with a lecture on how "important" it is, the editor is likely to look at it as something odious, just based on the argument that arrived with the manuscript.

You've got to find a way to make the editor, whoever she is, want to read the manuscript and go to bat for you as an author. Be persuasive.

[ahunter3]

Interestingly, I just received an email full of comments from an advance reader of the actual book, who says portions of it seem lifeless and flat, and that I need to insert a lot more of how I felt, my emotional reactions to what was going on...

Well, that's not as inconsistent as it may seem (amusing though I find the contrast), since the reviewer is reading the book and you are reading my blog!

[musicman]

Yes, I'm sure there is a difference between your book ms and your blog. I don't think there is a magic formula, but do be aware that blogs that are strident have a different purpose and effect than blogs that are persuasive. (at leas IMO)