HippoHead

You should just accept that it's just a big writing exercise - it will never get published. Write a novel. Or at least split your life story into different novels. So far it would become six.

And yeah, it comes across as arrogance rather than self-confidence.

edropus

Self-confidence isn't something that you have to display for everyone to see. That's what makes it SELF confidence. Calling yourself this or that, calling your novel 'brilliant' and explaining the complexities of Dexter's Laboratory to the layman comes off as arrogance. I'm not saying it is arrogance. I'm saying that's how it comes off.

I want to put the numbers in perspective here a little bit:

Assuming that you don't write about the first 5 years of your life, we're looking at about 40,000 words or 160 pages a year.

As this is written in diary form I can more or less assume that it only covers the time you've been writing it (5 years) putting us near 480 pages per year of your life.

Now take that into context with the average novel. That's... well over average length, I would guess.

If published in its current form, this would be about a 2400 page book.

If you were born on the space shuttle Discovery thirty seconds before it exploded in midair, were rocketed across the Atlantic ocean by the force of the explosion, landed off the coast of Africa in the water, was raised by a family of sharks, picked up in a fishing expedition by a tribe of Angolian natives, brought back to their village, trained in the great martial arts of humanity by a number of tibetan shaolin samurai african witchdoctors, built wings out of leaves and flew to Sudan then single-handedly stopped the genocide in Darfur by killing people then tying their ankles together and making them into corpse nunchuks and using those nunchuks to kill everyone else; THEN designed a time machine out of sand and a mind-stealing machine out of ants and traveled back in time and stole the literary talents of my favorite authors; I would still not read a 2400 page autobiography about you.

I take that back. I would read it. That being said, unless the rest of your autobiography is significantly different from the one you've posted here, that's not the case.


Look; I'm not trying to rip on you. That being said, the first thing I noticed was that after you said what type of writing it was (autobiographical) you immediately tossed the number of words out there. Before the type of writing, anything about your life, plot, lessons learned, or even the CONTENT of the book (videogames, visions, etc.) you toss the words out there. This makes me think that the word count is one of the primary factors that makes you think this is going to be published, or at least one of the things you're really proud of, think people should be impressed by, etc.

A little more math. That's about 330 words a day. Written in a diary. 11 year old girls write 330 words a day in their diaries. Let me give you an example:

"Today I woke up. I have three alarms so that I can wake up. My alarms went off. I got out of bed. I took a shower. I used soap to wash my balls. I forgot to use soap on my hands after I did that so I washed my hair with balls. This made me sad. I didn't have time to make waffles so I got McDonalds. I got a sausage mcskillet burrito. Then I went to work and ate my sausage mcskillet burrito. Then I had a flashback to a past life where I was Cesar Chavez, but it wasn't that cool because I was just at work eating a sausage burrito again.

I worked all day then I came home. I'm going to get a promotion. I got home and my wife hit me. She hits me a lot. It hurts but that's okay. She says that it's so that if we ever get in a fight I can take a lot of punches and protect her. I think she means so that when I get in a fight and she starts punching me along with everyone else I won't notice.

I farted at work and it smelled so bad that the guy behind me turned on this big stand-up fan. He blew it to the other side of the room and they turned their fan on too. So it just sandwiched the fart between the two flows of air and pushed it into the hallway so my boss down the hallway had to close the door.

I got a fish last week. He's really stupid. He has a little tree and he sits up in the tallest branches next to the top of the water and just lays there. At first I thought he was sick but then I put some food in there and he just waited for it to float next to him then he ate it. He's just really lazy. I cleaned his tank today. It smelled really bad."

There's about 360 words, a bit over the average for a day. Now that this is about me, and not about yourself (which tends to be everyone's favorite subject) can you POSSIBLY IMAGINE reading 2400 pages of that?

Writing a diary is good. I'm sure if you go back and start reading from the beginning, you'll learn some stuff about yourself. After finishing the whole thing, you might even be able to kick out an autobiography of readable length that focuses on the interesting parts. But you should realize sooner than later that it will not be published in its current form, period.

2.0

Now this is a run-on sentence I can get behind

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Dan

I'm willing to bet that I find myself chuckling over this at odd times over the next few weeks. =D>

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spider8

I suggest putting your diary on a blogsite and see how popular it is with other bloggers. I think you'll find most bloggers want everyone to read their diaries but they don't want to read anyone elses (unless it's got 'Hot Sex' as a title). I use a diary site occasionally (once a fortnight) and it lists the most popular diarists. One of the most popular is titled 'I fucked my son on his prom.' Some people even put 'Sex' in the title to get others to read it and then they write about schoolwork. Maybe if you called your diary 'Hot Sex with my Mum' it would spark more interest.

Nykimbur

What I meant by Dee Dee being a metaphor is that since it's a kids cartoon, there's certain exaggerations, such as a little kid building a huge laboratory in his bedroom, so in context with the real life equivalents of Dexter, Dee Dee would be loud neighbours or intruding family.

Fair point about "Utopian world" being used twice in close proximity.

The reason I wish Rhys would get hit by a car is because he stabbed me in the back and turned away from me and the videogame business we were planning to set up together. Not only that, I was practically his only friend back in year 8 and he repays me by giving me a "fuck you" to our business and our friendship. I'm not scared of getting in a fight with him; I'm angry enough that I'd probably win.

Good points about not reading Livejournal or Myspace, I think they're both fairly trashy diary writing, I don't consider my bio the same as some Livejournal blog. And in regards to having interesting content, my visions, theories, taste in videogames and general writing ability probably covers it.

The only problem I can see with my bio is that I've written too much, so I'm planning to make a cut edition. Thanks for all the replies.

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Dan

This is why I'm so hesitant to dispense any advice to an inexperienced writer. More often than not, it goes entirely unheard.

Best of luck to you.

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edropus

Heard, not addressed. It's hard to hear that stuff for some people.

That being said, if you can't handle criticism and only present to people you know are going to give you purely positive feedback (family, etc) you're pretty much doomed from the beginning.

duston

It seems to be a popular trend among the ruthlessly trendy and tragically hip to ascribe purposely pseudo philosophy to otherwise unintellectual topics, e.g. equating the smurfs to a deconstruction of Stalin's Soviet State. I might have taken notice if you'd done this with any panache or style, perhaps suggesting that DeeDee is a representation of the Id, or that Dexter is representing a loss of psychosexual desire, but your bland analysis is unispired and quite frankly, insipid.

lin

Man if you don't see THAT, there's no hope for you. Of course, that's just the beginner's take, leading up to the full deconstruction of Stalinism: the Blue Meanies

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Dr. Apopolus

If you don't intend to listen to anyones' advice, why post this is the critique section?

To be honest with you, no one is going to read this, even if it were free... or for that matter, even if you paid them to. I would have thought you'd realize that on your own, but to ignore people who reiterate this point, that's something entirely different. Good luck to you!

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Happenstance

Dan

Wait, what kind of money are we talking here?

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Dr. Apopolus

30 writers forum twizlers.

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Happenstance

Nykimbur

Most of you are probably right when you say that it won't be published as a first-time piece, however, if I publish a fiction novel first, possibly the first in the trilogy I'm currently attempting to write, then based on its popularity, I won't have any trouble publishing my bio in any form I see fit.

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No Brakes

From another thread...
With your terrific insight and humility, you'll go far. Good luck with that.