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Aug. 15th, 2012 02:10 amboth books are live as ebook and paperback on amazon, as paperback on createspace.
I think we put as much care and attention into it as any of the big publishers, and the writing's solid and the layout is good. Oh, the horribleness I've seen: six fonts for one page?
But there's a lot of bad "constructive" writerly "SHOULD DO/MUST DO/NEVER DO" that I just don't buy anymore.
My only request as a writer: tell the story honestly, openly, clearly. Maybe make the dialog ring true. I don't need 3 pages describing all the details of the character's environ unless its truly alien. If you tell me its a bedroom in a mansion with the accoutrements of a woman, then I'll be able to put the picture together. The color of the drapes is not significant.
I dunno. Do we lay down all these advisements from the lips of authors to newbies to make it seem like a secret society?
I sat down. I had an idea. I barrelled through. I wrote almost daily. I wrote one word, one sentence, one page, one chapter at a time. I just DID it. I didn't spend months laying on the worldbuilding because it didn't MATTER. I really did fly by the seat of my pants on it, throwing in ideas and images from travels, and experiences and drawing on that sort of thing but I don't have a definitive guide to how things MUST be. It didn't matter. Its a hospital, a house, a jet, a mansion. There wasn't much to them.
Oddly, or maybe not, I find most of the big guy published stuff to really lack spark anymore. I bought two last year and halfway through the first, I just DIDN"T fucking care about the characters even if the premise was amazing, she laid on the subplots and intrigue and some aspects of the world the characters were in, so thick and fast that I just felt lost and frustrated and walked away from them.
I don't write hugely twisty subplots, Fringe lost me when they went off the range, Lost too. I want a good story, not something I have to take notes. Game of thrones loses me sometimes, but they seem to string together enough that I'm not standing in the wasteland going WHAT THE FUCK!
I'm proud of what I created. Could I have made it more subplotted and descriptive? Nah. I wanted to use those words on the character and his immediate dilemma.
I also dislike the edict that says "THOU SHALT NEVER USE FIRST PERSON PRESENT". Why not? I don't know anyone's having trouble with it, it was the logical natural voice, just as third was for the novella. Do we presume readers can't understand a tale in real time?
Who makes ALL the rules? I dislike many of them.
I think we put as much care and attention into it as any of the big publishers, and the writing's solid and the layout is good. Oh, the horribleness I've seen: six fonts for one page?
But there's a lot of bad "constructive" writerly "SHOULD DO/MUST DO/NEVER DO" that I just don't buy anymore.
My only request as a writer: tell the story honestly, openly, clearly. Maybe make the dialog ring true. I don't need 3 pages describing all the details of the character's environ unless its truly alien. If you tell me its a bedroom in a mansion with the accoutrements of a woman, then I'll be able to put the picture together. The color of the drapes is not significant.
I dunno. Do we lay down all these advisements from the lips of authors to newbies to make it seem like a secret society?
I sat down. I had an idea. I barrelled through. I wrote almost daily. I wrote one word, one sentence, one page, one chapter at a time. I just DID it. I didn't spend months laying on the worldbuilding because it didn't MATTER. I really did fly by the seat of my pants on it, throwing in ideas and images from travels, and experiences and drawing on that sort of thing but I don't have a definitive guide to how things MUST be. It didn't matter. Its a hospital, a house, a jet, a mansion. There wasn't much to them.
Oddly, or maybe not, I find most of the big guy published stuff to really lack spark anymore. I bought two last year and halfway through the first, I just DIDN"T fucking care about the characters even if the premise was amazing, she laid on the subplots and intrigue and some aspects of the world the characters were in, so thick and fast that I just felt lost and frustrated and walked away from them.
I don't write hugely twisty subplots, Fringe lost me when they went off the range, Lost too. I want a good story, not something I have to take notes. Game of thrones loses me sometimes, but they seem to string together enough that I'm not standing in the wasteland going WHAT THE FUCK!
I'm proud of what I created. Could I have made it more subplotted and descriptive? Nah. I wanted to use those words on the character and his immediate dilemma.
I also dislike the edict that says "THOU SHALT NEVER USE FIRST PERSON PRESENT". Why not? I don't know anyone's having trouble with it, it was the logical natural voice, just as third was for the novella. Do we presume readers can't understand a tale in real time?
Who makes ALL the rules? I dislike many of them.
