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Thumper
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Thumper
Post Number: 306
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, October 31, 2004 - 06:49 pm: | 
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Hello All,
Now listen, its time somebody told many of you authors who are sending me books to be reviewed, fight the freaking desire, stong impulse, dream, dying wish, or whatever else you want to call it and DON'T, DO NOT SEND IT! Yawl got some SERIOUS work to do before you pluck down money to have your books printed; before you waste your time seeking out agents, publishers, editors; and most definitely, before you send your "work" to me and want me to waste my time just to tell you how bad it is. I love good writing. I love reading it. Now, I don't profess to know everything there is to know about the English language. But I love it, and I don't mind being a student of it. I suggest many of you recognize the love and accept it as air that your body NEEDS to breathe in and out. Although many of you will say that you know enough, don't lie to yourself. I've been reading your stuff. It's seriously lacking. For those of you whose sitting there saying, he can't be talking to me. Yousa a damn lie, I am most CERTAINLY talking to you, about you!
I don't believe most of you know the basics about how to build a story, tell a story, or able to see a good one or not if your life depenedent on it. So, since nobody else is telling you, I guess its up to me to enlighten you. I'm going to try to post a new word every month so you can know what it is and how it affects your writing. And most of you should be shame that I have to go to this extreme, because no way should a friggin reviewer know more about writing than the writers. Seeing as how that is not the case, let's start with what your English teacher should have drilled into your head.
Class, today's word is PROSE! I'm starting with this one because this is obviously the most neglect, ignored word in today's literature. Accoprding to Webster's New World Dictionary: Prose -- ordinary language, not poetry. Short definition ain't it? Yet many of you don't have a clue as to what it is. Ordinary, not flowery, not like you're giving a speech in church, not like your constantly at a job interview or conversing with your white co-workers. ORDINARY. Which means, if your character is street drug dealer, odds are he's not going to talk in complete, grammatically correct English WITHOUT any slang. Because for this type of character this IS his ordinary language. It would also go to show that if his parents were raised down South and their ORDINARY language should reflect it, that your character would have a southern inflection on some of his words as well. Now this is what you should think about when you're writing in an effort to being true to the character, and NOT to any of your motive or whatever point you're trying to get through to readers of your book. It also goes into what?? CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT! Which is our words for next month. But for right now, you all work on getting the existence of the word PROSE down. |
Lawchic
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Lawchic
Post Number: 82
Registered: 10-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, October 31, 2004 - 07:58 pm: |
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Tough day, eh, Thumper? You have my deepest sympathy. Lol. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 1993
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, November 01, 2004 - 11:14 am: |
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Thumper,
This is a great and necessary project that you have embarked upon. I hope, though, the ‘intended’ have the capacity 2 interpret/appreciate what you say and why you say it. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 769
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: 
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, November 01, 2004 - 01:00 pm: |
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Thump:
One night Frank Sinatra is sitting in a nightclub and he notices some guy staring at him. He calls over one of his boys.
"That guy over there is staring at me! It's driving me crazy. Find out what his problem is"
The aide goes over to the guy, talks comes back.
"He says he's a big fan of yours and he's crazy about you."
"But why is he staring at me?
"You're Frank Sinatra!"
It is a tribute to your humility and humanity that you are puzzled by this--I regularly post things places with my address on them and nobody sends me anything--they send you these things because you're Thumper, by damn! And you know good books and they are hoping that you will like their books.
They LOVE you! They respect you! They idolize you. If they didn't they wouldn't bother. You must accept it. It is part of the burden of being a STAR! It's a curse, I know--
Re Prose:
Good advice. And I might even give the same myself--
Except--
Where would this leave works such as Ulysees by James Joyce, or the works of Joyce disciple John Edgar Wideman--the works of Paul Beatty and Xam Wilson Cartier Toni Morrison and Arthur Flowers, not to mention Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsberg, Amirir Baraka to name a few--idiosyncratic works that hold to no pattern or model but that stretch the language and the form? |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 1999
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, November 01, 2004 - 01:19 pm: |
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Chris,
I know it is risky for lowly me to speak for Thumper. But I’d suspect the answer to your question lies in whether what one does garners a "Yes" response to "Does one’s ‘idiosyncratic works’ in fact ‘stretch the language and the form’?"
If the author accomplishes that feat, and does so with a discernable pattern of eloquence and style, even the most exacting literary eye may succumb to such. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 1769
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, November 01, 2004 - 02:47 pm: |
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Separating the wheat from the chaff is the task that falls to a reviewer. Who knows, Thumper? You may find a diamond in the rough, a pearl in an oyster. That is your reward and should be your hope.
OK, everybody, altogether now: "Oh shut up, Cynique!" |
Klb
Veteran Poster
Username: Klb
Post Number: 51
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 03, 2004 - 12:03 pm: |
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This is so funny! Somebody got a major hair in his a$$. I just can't stop laughing. One can't help but wonder exactly what it was that made Thumper go T-totally mad. It would be in poor taste for him to say. So I'll just shake my head and chuckle. |
Alkebulan
First Time Poster
Username: Alkebulan
Post Number: 1
Registered: 12-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, December 29, 2004 - 05:53 pm: |
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the agony expressed in the post above is completely understandable. i wonder, though, to what extent aspiring authors will be discouraged from submitting manuscripts by it. my suggestion would be to begin posting exerpts (w/o authors names, if that's considered excessively punitive) from the worst submissions received over some given period of time.
yes, mediocrity abounds, and not just in literature, but at least you don't usually have to read past a couple of pages, sometimes, a couple of paragraphs or even sentences, before the absence of literary ability manifests itself.
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