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So, Jamie was the first to tell me this afternoon that Apex drew names for their charity auction, and Jeremy winned something! Woots all around! (Jamie won too, which also rocks).
Something pretty gee-darned cool, too. If memory serves, they had like 4 or 5 critiques of varying lengths offered, and I bought 2-3 tickets for each one. The one I scored is with Apex Editor Mari Adkins, and it's for up to 30k words. And I need it...at this point in my would-be career, that is probably what I need the most (besides not dancing about writing). So now, I just need to grind through a long enough manuscript to give her something to read. I am having a lot of fun with The Seattle Pizza Company; that's the one I want her to critique.
Isn't there something kind of BDSM-ish about paying someone to tell me how bad my writing is?
In other news, I started Douglas Clegg's Afterlife, and am having trouble getting into it. I did OK until two characters engaged in a dialogue, and they used langage that bugged me for some reason. It just didn't seem like a real discussion, like Clegg had never actually heard two people in that circumstance have that kind of intimate discussion. Or maybe my life experiences would have forced me to write it differently. But, Clegg is a well-liked author and obviously leaps and bounds more successful than I at the craft...it just struck me at how easy it is for language to derail what could be a very good story.
Convention packing list time!
2 years ago
4 comments:
I read a book like that once. The protagonist's inner dialogue drove me nuts.
From what I remember I enjoyed AFTERLIFE ... it was one of his better efforts. Try to give it some more time.
Congratulations!
Having read a couple of Clegg's books, but not that one, maybe his editor was out of town the day he wrote that particular part. I don't know- I guess we are all entitled to a bad writing day.
Woot on the contest, we rock!
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