Blast from the past

[kippurbird]

Way back in 2007 (is that way back?) I was part of a writing group. One of the writers in the group gave us a novel she called, "Plain Jane".

I had a lot to say about Plain Jane, of which you can see here. it had one of the more uurgh endings that I've ever seen in a book. In the end she left because our criticisms were to harsh we didn't understand her genius.


jessaj discovered that she had gone ahead and gotten the book self-published and let me know.

So, I thought I'd share with you all.

She gave herself a five star review as you'll be able to see.

Comments

[swevene.livejournal.com]

That is an unsettling amount of good reviews.

[anarchicq.livejournal.com]

I think I smell Kip's next sporking title!

[chocolatemithra.livejournal.com]

Supposing a certain reader of yours was possibly relocating to your neck of the woods (Santa Barbara specifically) sometime in the next half-year, and supposing further that reader was totally down with driving a couple of hours into LA every week, how amenable would you be to getting into another writing group?

If you wouldn't, it's totally understandable of course. I'll freely admit that your criticism would be more helpful to me than mine would be to you. And strangers CAN be dangerous. I do have a Galbatorix goatee, after all.

[faded-enmity.livejournal.com]

Me too, re. the Galby goatee. And I'm considering moving to Orange County if I can't find a job in San Diego.

[kjtaylor.livejournal.com]

Er, you know I'm the reason most people think he has a goatee, right? At least, I'm pretty sure I am. Are you telling me you BOTH have pointy chin-beards like the Devil?

[chocolatemithra.livejournal.com]

Pointy devil beard, or failed fu manchu? If there's any line between them, it's a fine one. It's gone now in any case thanks to a recent job interview. I'm now looking very respectable.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Supposedly fairly likely.

Of course supposedly you would also likely get badgered into going into the LARP I belong to.

[chocolatemithra.livejournal.com]

Sweet! Never LARPed, but seen it done. Looks like smashing good fun. Did a bit of SCA fighting (more light than heavy) a decade ago, I imagine it's somewhat similar.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

This is the website (http://www.dyingkingdoms.com/) for the LARP.

From what I know it's vaguely similar... but not so much emphasis on period pieces and things like that. You can check out the handbook.

[kjtaylor.livejournal.com]

Let me tell you a little story. And don't worry, I'm a professional!

Ahem.

This coming Monday, some people are coming to put in new flooring in my bedroom, because the carpet I have at the moment is literally disintegrating (it can't survive the presence of so much genius, you know). This means that we're going to have to move out all the furniture, so before that can happen I have to pack up most of my possessions. These include the entire contents of my enormous ceiling-high bookshelf.

Yesterday, whilst cleaning out the bottom level of that shelf, I came across some "books" that weren't real books. That is, they were unpublished manuscripts. There were at least twenty of them. About ten printed manuscripts bound in folders, and about ten more school exercise books. Every single page of those 50-page (and one 100-page) exercise books was literally covered from top to bottom with line upon line of dense, hastily scrawled handwriting. Not one blank page was left in any of them.

Every single one of those manuscripts and exercise books was filled by me, and me alone. Some of the manuscripts were about 300 A4 pages long, double-sided. Dozens of novel-length stories, all written during my teenage years. They represented about ten years of concentrated effort, during which I had no friends, neglected my schoolwork and sometimes even forgot to eat.

None of them were published, or ever will be. During the cleanup, I actually threw most of them away (I kept the handwritten stuff).

Now, more than ten years after I first started writing all that, I'm actually publishing novels. Am I bitter about all the wasted effort? Heck no, and it wasn't wasted. But I repeat. Ten years of writing novels. Ten solid years of constant, obsessive hard work and effort. Ten. Years. Of. My. Life. Years in which I focused on almost nothing else. All those dead stories that had to come before I was ready to produce something worth publishing.

Now do you understand why I feel vaguely depressed whenever I hear about people who honestly think they can skip all that? Hell, when I was a teenager everyone and their cat told me to self-publish. I refused point-blank every time. At first I wasn't even sure why. But I soon realised that it was because I wanted getting published to MEAN something. I didn't just want to get published, I wanted to be good enough to get published.

Go back to the drawing board, Plain Jane. Nobody's impressed.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Everyone and their cat tells me to self-publish too, but I keep on resisting it.

I've got mounds of notebooks and printed pages of stuff I've written. Most of it is terrible. One day I shall post some of the really old stuff and you can laugh at me.

[kd7sov]

Let me see if I've got this straight.

She self-published the uterus mystery?

And that many people actually like it?

*investigates a bit, finds a link to a free HTML sample* With that kind of narration?

[lccorp2.livejournal.com]

My bets are on those being dummy reviews.

[white-wolf03.livejournal.com]

Friends I imagine.

And don't you love this phrase by the author: "What? You'd think I'd give my books less than five stars...

Ugh. The arrogance. I swear if I ever get published, first thing I'll do is animously bring it to anti-shurtgal's attention.

[white-wolf03.livejournal.com]

The novel I mean. Nothing like some good old-fashion sporking.

[chocolatemithra.livejournal.com]

Totally agree with you re: the sporking. Hard-pressed to imagine a more constructive form of criticism than somebody willing to read your book and literally point out EVERYTHING that's wrong with it.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

*looks at the Amazon preview*

Oh dear lord, it's as bad as I remember.

[autarkhos.livejournal.com]

Just reading this...

It reminds me of a play some woman I know wrote, and a bunch of us ended up reading it in a great whilst laughing madly.

It was about a music festival, and it was truly the dullest, most failed attempt at drama I've ever seen in a play. We even tried acting out the most faux-drama filled parts, and even TRYING we didn't manage to make it any less hammy.

Abortions, drugs, rapes, etc.

Sounds a lot like this book.

PS. We didn't tell the woman any of the criticisms because she was batshit and would've likely flipped out worse than this woman.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

That's too bad. She probably could have used it.

[autarkhos.livejournal.com]

She probably could've. But I was SCARED of her.

[djiril.livejournal.com]

A few months ago I was on a Greyhound somewhere just north of the Bay Area and I say a hand-painted sign advertising a novel of this title on a fence facing the highway. Could this have been it?

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Maybe!

[ravenswept.livejournal.com]

I wonder if she understands that just because you self publish doesn't mean you can now brag about being a published author. Because to do so, you have to be accepted by a legitimate publishing house. Vanity (and the word has never been so well deserved) publishing is simply printing a story in book form.

Why is she even giving her book a review anyway, doesn't she realize that's incredibly cheap and shows she's not mature enough for that kind of thing? Responding to a review maybe, Rice shows how that can go wrong quickly, but to post a review of your own book? Shallow.

[smurasaki.livejournal.com]

Gah. Granted, there are traditionally published books that are every bit as bad. Well, all right, books with giant patchwork wombs and brain-eating protagonists probably deserve their own category, but I've read at least one book that had the same degree of "reality? pfffft" as the bits you posted.

I am oddly amused that she offered a list of ways to make your character(s) more likable/relatable and yet didn't follow that list. At all. Not that it would have helped, but it's still kind of funny.