Malone

I think "And 14 Reasons You May Be" or something along those lines is the rest of the title.

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CroZ

Was that directed at me? I can't tell.

Mike C

The book's highly recommended by many, though I haven't read it.

As far as I'm concerned, #1 is the distillation of all the others. Your book's not good enough. The other 25 are just reasons why its not good enough.

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Loulou

Truthy m'love, are you sure this wasn't just a personal letter to you in response to a manuscript you sent out?

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Mike C

Harsh, Loulou, harsh.


But funny!

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CodeRed

TT, I've noticed you're very fond of espousing other peoples' advice, let me offer you another great quote:

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
Winston Churchill

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All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Gone Wishing @ MySpace

JosephB

27. You are a nattering, knuckle-headed, nitwit troll.

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Remedy

(Please excuse spelling mistakes if you see any. My spell checker (once again) bit the dust, and unfortunately, that's never been one of my strong suits.)

Subjective. I've read books that have prompted me to sit there and think, Good Lord, someone actually likes this? But other people have liked them, so what's "good enough" varies between people.

That... That I'd usually agree with to some extent. However, it's not always the case.

I do think writing is easy, and funnily enough, I am published. There goes that never. Am I perfect? Absolutely not, and it took me a while to get to the point where I found writing to be easy. I used to be a lot worse at it than I am now.

False praise is pretty subjective too. Sometimes people actually mean what they say, it's just that no one else agrees.

Dear God, if only that was a case for not being published. Just look at tons of mystery books, and you'll see so many instances where the writer clearly has no idea what they're talking about. Even some of the famous mystery writers have problems with that.

That goes with others on here as well (13, 14, 17, 19, 20, 21). I offer to you a new rule:

Thou shalt not rephrase the same thing over and over again. KISS.

It won't keep you from being published (as shown by the book this apparently came from), but it's a good thing to follow anyway.

More subjectivity. The book you read must have sucked, to deal with opinions and then add the word "never" on to it.

Another thing I only wish. But nope, people stick in their preaching all the time, and it still gets published.

I care. Hence, that's incorrect.

More wishing. There's little originality left these days.

Subjective again.

Even more wishing! I can't remember the last time I read a book in which the main good guy keeled over (the antagonist dies all the time).

Unfortunately, that tends to get by too.

I'm just going to stick all of these under wishing again, because I don't see any decent advice in there, and I've seen books with all of these.

Vocabulary is a bitch. I specifically remember sitting in a creative writing class with a girl who had a large vocabulary (although I strongly suspect she looked it up when she needed it) and who wrote all of her stories with it. It made her work distracting, the point was lost, and it just sounded so egotistical.

I fail to see how this would be a problem.

Still wishing (maybe I should just start using "" to indicate that). People tend to suck with dialogue, and I've made a few mistakes in that category as well; it was picked up by a peer editor, but it slipped past the publication editor.

There's an audience? No one tells me these things.

Unless you get a ghost writer.

Truth-Teller

Is your sole purpose on this forum to call me nitwit, dimwit, and asshole?

That's Lin's and MikeC's job.

Is this some kind of new trio?

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Truth-Teller

This is why you write the way you do.

Literature is dead, right now. And you're in the slush-pile.

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When you try to impress, instead of communicating the written word, you have already failed as a writer; and if you're writing to be loved, instead of loving to write, you should not be called on.

Foxee

Ah, you need to actually read her post, TT, not just the parts you want to refute. She IS published. That's kinda the point.

So when are you going to put up some work for critique, TT? It's been a while.

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CroZ

I think 'kill your darlings' is supposed to mean revise and edit. It's one of those overused phrases like show don't tell.

I'm surprised that's not on the list.

Swamp Thing

TT -

I was about to write a note asking everyone to lighten up since you posted what seemed to me a fairly informative list and a constructive post. But then you go and respond to an equally constructive post with this drivel.

Oh well, off to critique. Have fun getting slammed.

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Mike C

No, we're just at the front of the queue.

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SevenWritez

So Truth, do you ever plan on posting any work? I mean, if literature is dead, and Stephen King is a God, then surely you're the missing link.