Today,
I received good news about a paper I'd written for my recent grad school class, but for the first time in a long while, I'd been very nervous about something I'd written. It's that comfortable old dread, that sudden realization of the possibility that one has labored hard and still produced a dud. As I clicked through the university's
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I had to laugh reading your descriptions of Those Guys. I've taken two semesters of honors composition and I've already come to recognize them. I do believe you're onto something about overconfidence generating complacency about the quality of one's work.
I don't avoid pointing out foibles, nor exaggerate the good points of the writing, but rather take care to point out both the merits and hitches I encounter in the work. It always kills me when I give what I consider a well-rounded and sensitive critique to Those Guys and then receive from them a bunch of narrow, condescending remarks. I always think, "Well, had I known it was going to be that way, I'd have been a little bit cruel, because your work's not all that."
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The second was when I was editing for Antithesis Common; a writer sent in a "story" that was, to put it nicely ( ... )
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At this point, one might hope he would start to accept that his brilliance is comprehensible only to him, and that if he wants his writing to interface with the broader world he'll have to make some alterations (although more likely he went on complaining about how no one gets it).
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Yes. I find it really strange, as I thought writers were writers were writers, but the writers within fanfic have a far different attitude, and a vast amount of what comes across as deep love for the characters they write of. Not that you can't love characters you write in o-fic, but usually in fanfic the love is for some-one else's creation that we just want to explore, for nothing, not for fame or money, but out of sheer love.
As for wimpiness. I view writing as looking up a flight of stairs. I see writers many steps above and know in my heart I can't get that far just because I've not go the intelligence or their gifts; I feel it's not ever possible to climb those stairs, but I am glad they're there because it shows me what can be done. Of course I feel that way when reading good original fiction, but ( ... )
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He insisted on calling, in every one of his pile of stories, female genitalia "the garden." He was always entering someone's "garden" amid much moisture and humidity.
OMG!
( ... )
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The porn pile was funny; my editor and I giggled over it often, and my sister and I, after I told her about it, made jokes about it for years after. I also vacillate between thinking "John" was either really creepy or really tone-deaf, based on the number of self-insert porns he felt it necessary to send to the journal. O.O
men tend to project more self-confidence than women, even if said guys may not feel all that confident if you really press them. And I note that the overly-confident writers you've chosen to describe are...men! :^)
Definitely! I've worked with few obnoxiously overconfident woman writers ... actually, only one comes immediately to mind, and given that I've worked with many more woman writers then male writers, I do think that is significant ( ... )
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I do much, much better with gentle critiquing.
Possibly because on of my major involvements in a non-fannish writing community has been through the Critters workshop--and Andrew Burt, the leader of that group, requires diplomacy when offering critiques--I've come to see anything but diplomatic critique as self-defeating. I don't think there's ever a need for the kind of tone you describe; it immediately puts the writer on the defensive, and she/he stops being able to hear what the critic has to say. That's counterproductive, imo. If I take my time to offer a critique for a writer, I want her to be able to hear it well enough to maybe use it! :D
Of course, I realize that tone is common throughout the writing world. Just look at the reviews on ff.net. ;)
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Yes, well put! I know, when I reread something I've written, I have this ideal of what I want it to be. I don't even know if that ideal is attainable, but when it [inevitably] falls short, I keep picking at it and working at it.
The book is AWFUL.
This seems so often sadly the case of published fiction. I remember reading The Sword of Shannara for a class one time and thinking, "How did this crap even get published??" and the author went on to publish much more and, apparently, be well-respected enough in the fantasy genre that his book was being taught in university courses. :^| I was capable of doing better when I was in high school.
I mean, how often do I ask "How come this drivel is getting published while so many awesome fan writers I know don't get recognised?"You're right that most of us never do try. And sending stuff out is hard work. And rarely satisfying. The best publications often have acceptance rates around 1%, so they' ( ... )
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I have to admit I didn't even find it entertaining - just frustrating. But that's a sleeping rant that'll wake up and get written some other time! I agree that I know many writers who could do waaay better in our (relatively small) fandom alone. I also suspect that GRRM is one of those Confident Guys and just manages to project his certainty outwards!
Of course, a rejection is a rejection, and most of us never know if a story was immediately discarded or something that the editor thought, "I can see publishing this, just not right now," or if the story was never even read at all.
Yup... and some of us live in such holy fear of rejection that we don't even bother in the first place. While someone else with (maybe) a healthier dose of self-regard does bother and might just fill a gap...
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