Sigh.
I ask people not to comment in that thread right now, or I'm going to freeze it. I link not because I want people to jump in and argue (I most emphatically don't) but because it demonstrates the way people prefer to find faults in others instead of themselves.
I ask people not to comment in that thread right now, or I'm going to freeze it. I link not because I want people to jump in and argue (I most emphatically don't) but because it demonstrates the way people prefer to find faults in others instead of themselves.
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burger_eater- A large duck
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Comments
- 14 Jan 2019, 21:47Oh, yeah, excellent point.
- 14 Jan 2019, 21:46Oh yeah. Like the lawyers who get obvious really venal criminals off because it makes their success rate look good. But those are not the ones I am referring to in meaning well. These guys are mixed…
- 14 Jan 2019, 20:37This reminds me of the time my wife was injured and the insurance guy handling her case did everything possible to deny and stall the payment. We had to put her surgery on a credit card because this…
- 14 Jan 2019, 19:24The creepiest part is that some of them are actually well meaning.
- 14 Jan 2019, 19:08Yeah. It's godawful what people will do when they have authority and no fear about using it.
Comments
She didn't discount any of your actual comments or criticisms themselves; I think she felt slighted. And given the number of people who read her very long essay and took away mostly that she looked down on icky genre -- many of whom I could point out on LJ -- when this was not really the sum of what she was doing... I think it's a good example of that sensitivity tick that many, many writers have when it comes to the work their own range falls into.
Your response was exasperated, but completely dead on; I suspect, at this point, that she has never worked with a crit group, or at least not a crit group that looks at market viability. And niceness engine? You've done yeoman's work here, and in spite of her defensive response, you've been far more helpful than she would have a right to expect.
If she wants more critique, I'd point her to Absolute Write's SYW forums. The Query section is especially good. My only warning to her would be that the SYW folks are both thorough and blunt.
(I'd volunteer myself, but I'm not a regular reader of women's fiction, so my reactions and suggestion would be off, I think.)
I have to admit, I pulled back from most of the message boards there because of time, and have barely visited in weeks. But judging by the content of that first anti-agent post of hers, I don't think she's ready to get notes from the great unwashed of the internet.
She'd get some great feedback, though. You have to winnow out the not-so-great critiques, but from what I've seen, the ratio of signal-to-noise is quite good. There are quite a few writers who pay forward on SYW.
And yes on the genre trashing thing. A great many people jumped on that with her initial post. It's very much the My Favorite Argument Syndrome, where certain people can not have a nuanced discussion of a topic because they try to turn every conversation back to an argument they've made many times and feel safe continuing.
You should have crushed her like a bug, told her she DID have cooties, and that when the sacking and pillaging started she'd be first against the wall!
If I *were* to post on the thread in question, it would be to add that some of the best crits I've had were from people who actually hate my genre, since they are not blinded by expectations, and take nothing for granted.
And I hear what you're saying about out-of-genre beta readers. Everything has it's up- and down-sides.