I love Jenny Armintrout's blog, which you can find here http://jennytrout.blogspot.co.uk/?zx=47e909f72dd2174 but this post isn't about shameless promotion of a writer whose only book I've read is her freebie book on that blog (on the to read list: all the others she's written).
Instead, I want to talk about something specific she's mentioned, about the publishing world that actually makes my heart sink.
She refers a few times, in various blogs, about the "Sunshine Sisterhood of Writers", and how in the industry as a whole, you have to admire and rate your peers regardless of how good you think they actually are. I also got a friend add on Goodreads from an author because I'd panned someone else, and they admired my balls (she'd been congratulated by this writer on her position on amazon's ebook sellers list, and read this woman's work as a thanks for the congratulations, then couldn't bring herself to talk about the work because it really is that abysmal. But maybe I think that because the book we're discussing here seems to think if you live in Essex you live next to Indian guys. One of my neighbour's is a handicapped woman who keeps chickens and constantly has two or more carers with her, and the other side is a white van man and his family who keep themselves to themselves. Opposite is my old Guide leader's daughter, who also keeps chickens. We're so white middle-class it hurts. Regardless, her view is racist and she might as well have the entire county in the Sugar Hut every night for all she knows of Essex life. But I'm never bitter about the false ideals of my county, or indeed, the circumstances that may arise from living in close proximity to ethnic minorities).
It actually makes me sick. So if I want to enter this world, I have to make nice with people no matter how much I don't believe it? Okay, I'm the girl who's had a mental dilemma about the fact I work in fast food and for years I've had to convince myself about our products in order to even sell the damn things, although this horse meat scandal that's happened recently has nicely put my decision to rest (look, believe what you want to believe about whether the facts being presented to you are the facts, but since the counterbalance is rumour and mockery and not factually based, I have to go with what I'm told. It seriously took me years to make my conscience settle on this, but I did start working at a burger bar when I was borderline vegan, so forgive me a little) but I am all about being honest.
If you're not honest, how can you grow? I don't mean telling someone "you're shit, mate" but constructive criticism is where I'm at. My driving instructor got that if he gave me constructive criticism, I'd drive well. If I did a manoeuvre right and he complimented me, there'd be seconds before I fucked up. I seriously mess up being told I'm good, I would not last long in the sisterhood. It would be more like 'you did really well with that plot device' 'yeah, yeah, I know I'm shit'.
Maybe it's the British sense of self-degradation in me, but I don't think so. I said in another post, I've been on my deathbed before, and coming out of hospital I couldn't remember the word "spoon" or have a conversation for longer than 30 seconds without losing track of what was being said. I have written a novel in the time since, I have earned a promotion at work, I'm the only person in my store to have completed our apprenticeship programme, I've gotten a first class pass in a book-keeping course and passed my driving test. I am full of "I can do anything, I have balls of steel" bravado as a result. But you tell me how well I'm doing and I'll cry because you're lying.
**side bar for hilarity, I mentioned the book-keeping at work, and then a few weeks later, I actually had a conversation with someone where they were talking about other things in people's lives besides burgers and fries and he goes 'and you're studying to be a librarian, right?' like you have to take exams on the Dewey Decimal System the way cab drivers in London do. He meant the book-keeping and thought that's what it was. I agreed, because my mind was blown for a second, and then could not stop laughing. Because balancing accounts helps with shelving books ... still laughing now.**
Anyway, so I think I'd suck in the sisterhood. My presence on goodreads alone (where I've included a review with no stars because I thought the story was crap) would have me booted out before I hit the shelves. Fuck it, seriously, I don't want to sell maybe 50 copies and be told it's so good ... like a few friends have read my writing, and it went on a website temporarily. One friend, and a few people on this site were like 'yeah, it's good, well done' and it's like 'thanks, means a lot, but why?' the reviews I've liked best were:
-my friend Lydia, who told me off for my fragmented sentences. I kinda blame the whole 'slight-brain-damage' thing because that's how I think now, in fragmented sentences, but she was right. It read like "I need to go to the store. I need some eggs. I have a cake to bake." and she said it did her head in, and should be "I need to go to the store because I need some eggs for the cake I'm baking." - same tone, same information, but so much easier to read. We ended up having a long conversation over pizza about stuff like sentence lengths and the application of punctuation to change tone and ... yeah, we're raging geeks (we're so Essex Gel it hurts, right?) - we also talked about her writing and how it's like all these books we keep referring each other to, just so you're aware my punctuation wasn't the only hot topic over my gluten-free BBQ chicken and her foot-long lasagne.
-someone on fanstory who told me what I already know, my tense is all over the place. It's hard though, because I'm writing recent-past tense, so sometimes it goes "I am feeling like this, because this happened." So yes, I mix tenses, but there is a relevance. There are sometimes I mix them when I shouldn't though, so I do need to edit, which I will next time I get a break from work (Tuesday. I live for Tuesdays. I'm meant to have Monday's off too, but I work from 11pm on a Sunday to 8am-ish on a Monday so bollocks to that idea) but she wanted me to change it all to present tense. Fuck that shit, it's recent-past.
Anyway, even though I have had strong reactions to this, you can see that they've caused me to think and emote more so than 'yeah, that's good' although props to my friend Sammie (who got me writing again in the first place after I thought high school killed it, so Sammie's allowed to tell me I'm good and nothing else) because she keeps trying to guess what's going to happen next and she ends up with emails sent at 2.30am when I'm on my break waxing lyrical about the most dickheaded of my characters.
So how, if this is my reaction, could I ever survive being published? Although I wrote a bad review recently and got a response from one of my favourite YA writers, so maybe I could survive.
It wasn't my fault by the way, Goodreads linked a pyschologist's first novel to the YA author because they're both called Jay Asher. I think I was the first person to read and then review this book, and it was terrible, but I thought that I loved 13 reasons why, and the future of us, and Jay wrote in the future of us (and I paraphrase) "if nothing else, you should respect a writer for finishing a book, because writing an entire book takes so much effort" so I thought "damn straight Jay, I'll be really lenient with my review as a result." Then someone commented on my review and said it wasn't his, and he messaged me and said it wasn't his, but thanks for being nice about his actual books in my review, and then he blogged my review as his "favourite bad review" because the bad review isn't even about his writing and I crawled in a hole and died a little. Thanks Jay, parade the one time this year I got it wrong (but I still love you!). If you want to read it and my god-awful grammar, it's http://jayasher.blogspot.co.uk/ oh yeah, us writers are all about this blogger.
I've gone off on a tangent and forgotten how I got here. Sorry, my 1am finish lasted until 3.30 and then I bought microwave pizza, ate it and fucked about on candy crush saga until 5am and didn't wake up again until 1pm. I clearly have no idea what the fuck I'm doing right now but I also have a lot of shit I want to talk about. I also start work at 11pm, so win.
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