Monday, December 03, 2001
"From Cabinet 34, Drawer 6" wound up getting an additional eight hours of work out of me today, quite unexpectedly. It began as a little innocent polishing, which led to a couple of continuty fixes, and culminated in a new 300+ word scene. Tomorrow morning it goes in the mail before it pulls anything else of this sort. Oh, and a cool link that turned up turning my research on the story:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/tetrapod980702.html
I assume that Blogger won't render that somehow useless. We shall see.
Publishers should print a note somewhere inside all novels, prominently placed so that there's no possiblity that readers could ever possibly miss the damned thing. I'd say the indicia page, but I might be the only person on earth that reads those. Maybe it could be printed on the title page, or before the first sentence, or after the last, just before THE END. It would go something like this:
The author appreciates your having taken the time to read this book. That's why it was written. However, we ask that you do not send him or her your detailed thoughts on any flaws you may have perceived herein and/or notes on how you could have done it better. In fact, we strongly caution you against doing so, as this will only piss her or him off, dash fragile egos, and we still need to squeeze a few more novels out of the poor saps. We thank you for your cooperation and hope it will have enriched your reading experience.
Yep. That ought to do it just fine. I think I'll fax it off to Penguin-Putnam in the morning.
Which is to say, please do not send me that sort of letter or e-mail. I'd rather just keep reading all the good stuff that Publisher's Weekly and Booklist has been writing about me. You see, every so often, writers get together at obscure, secret enclaves (anyplace that serves alcohol until very late will do) and we ask one another these sorts of questions. All the Did-It-Suck-As-Much-As-I-Think-It-Sucked questions. And as the night bleeds away towards dawn and brutal honesty begins replacing our ordinarily kindly dispositions, we say mean things to one another. We pick nits and dig at one another's plots and syntactical peculiarities until there's not a dry eye or stiff upper lip in the place. And, just in case that's not enough, we also have our editors, copyeditors, and anonymous Amazon.com "reviewers" to be sure we get the point.
(What's even more amazing are the dolts who corner you at readings or conventions to shake your hand, tell you how nice it is to finally meet you, and then proceed, to your face, to explain why you couldn't write your way out of a hole in the ground.)
So, please, keep all that helpful, well-meaning, constructive criticism to yourself. The real world of writers and books bears no resemblance whatsoever to college creative writing classes or workshops. We do this for a living, without stunt doubles and day jobs, and understand our flaws better than you will ever possibly know.
Of course, this prohibition does not apply to slavering praise and nubile, young sycophants. I'd give a hundred astute critics for one appropriately obsequious sycophant any day. Just try me.
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