Humble Pie
Feb. 15th, 2005 09:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
raefinlayI've been devouring stories at SciFiction and Strange Horizons the last few days. My obnoxiously analytical brain has poke-poke-poked at them, determining why they work, contrasting them with my stories that assuredly do not.
Here are the areas where I am lacking:
1. Prose. Yep, it comes right down to the fact that my writing is just not there yet. Descriptions, dialog, cadence, originality of phrasing... I can tell within the first two paragraphs of a story why it captured the attention of a slush reader. Which, I guess, is a good thing. It would be worse, I suppose, if I didn't "get it."
2. Trends. Alas, my writing style and subject matter just aren't "in." I'm not arrogant enough to think I would squeak by if my writing espoused the current spec fic party line; surely were my prose at the pro level, I'd still manage a sale or two. Still, I can't escape the fact that a huge majority of published fantasy takes place in the here and now, on Earth (usually the good 'ol US of A) and spouts some kind of existential philosophy. Having a Christian worldview could send me flying back to 4 The Lurve. Unless my writing is spectacular. And since I can't ask someone to embrace my philosophy anymore than they can ask me to embrace theirs, then so be it. I'll just have to write better.
3. Economy. In the stories I like the best, there are no superfluous characters, no introductory setting paragraphs (or if there are, it is merely illusion and they come full circle in the end, showing that the author did, indeed, have a reason to write them), no extraneous dialog. I guess this could fall under the "prose" category, but it feels like something else. It feels different to read an economical story. It feels like I'm reading a "story" rather than an author's self-indulgent experiment. I've seen arrogant waxing...I got plenty of it reading college textbooks with page-long sentences. Long-windedness in fiction is rarely arrogance, I know. Usually, like me, an author is just finding her word legs and doesn't trust herself to just say what she means. Even understanding this, I tend to write around things, over-explaining, compounding unnecessary words, bludgeoning my reader with my purpose. It's not arrogance; it's neo-writer-itis. But when I read that stuff, it feels like arrogance. Note to self.
It's discouraging. I read these fabulous, fabulous stories and think...my writing will never be that good! But at least I see the distance between here and there. The solution to every problem in life begins with identification of the problem.
Problem identified. Now, onward toward my million-words-o-crap goal...
Here are the areas where I am lacking:
1. Prose. Yep, it comes right down to the fact that my writing is just not there yet. Descriptions, dialog, cadence, originality of phrasing... I can tell within the first two paragraphs of a story why it captured the attention of a slush reader. Which, I guess, is a good thing. It would be worse, I suppose, if I didn't "get it."
2. Trends. Alas, my writing style and subject matter just aren't "in." I'm not arrogant enough to think I would squeak by if my writing espoused the current spec fic party line; surely were my prose at the pro level, I'd still manage a sale or two. Still, I can't escape the fact that a huge majority of published fantasy takes place in the here and now, on Earth (usually the good 'ol US of A) and spouts some kind of existential philosophy. Having a Christian worldview could send me flying back to 4 The Lurve. Unless my writing is spectacular. And since I can't ask someone to embrace my philosophy anymore than they can ask me to embrace theirs, then so be it. I'll just have to write better.
3. Economy. In the stories I like the best, there are no superfluous characters, no introductory setting paragraphs (or if there are, it is merely illusion and they come full circle in the end, showing that the author did, indeed, have a reason to write them), no extraneous dialog. I guess this could fall under the "prose" category, but it feels like something else. It feels different to read an economical story. It feels like I'm reading a "story" rather than an author's self-indulgent experiment. I've seen arrogant waxing...I got plenty of it reading college textbooks with page-long sentences. Long-windedness in fiction is rarely arrogance, I know. Usually, like me, an author is just finding her word legs and doesn't trust herself to just say what she means. Even understanding this, I tend to write around things, over-explaining, compounding unnecessary words, bludgeoning my reader with my purpose. It's not arrogance; it's neo-writer-itis. But when I read that stuff, it feels like arrogance. Note to self.
It's discouraging. I read these fabulous, fabulous stories and think...my writing will never be that good! But at least I see the distance between here and there. The solution to every problem in life begins with identification of the problem.
Problem identified. Now, onward toward my million-words-o-crap goal...
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no subject
Date: 2005-02-16 08:29 pm (UTC)Jodi
Heather
Rae
David
I'm sure there are others out there, but I can't think of them. Most importantly all were stories with traditional elements. A magical world unlike our own/etc. We were all working on our first draft of our first novel. Naturally Jodes finished and left the struggling group of three. And then you, David, and Heather all started to have major questions of the feasibility of your novels (which were so close to my own inner doubts, if that makes any sense). And I just got depressed. I know it is illogical. I know that the state of someone else's novel shouldn't impact how I felt about my own. But it did?
I'm just an idiot...
:)
no subject
Date: 2005-02-16 08:35 pm (UTC)*stomps UDD*
*buries remains of UDD*
*also an idiot*
no subject
Date: 2005-02-17 02:10 am (UTC)*feeds off raerae*
no subject
Date: 2005-02-17 02:09 am (UTC)*gigglesnort*
I just have all the time in the world to write. And, you know. Barfing words on the page. *blink*
no subject
Date: 2005-02-17 12:40 pm (UTC)