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megwritesSo, I'm browsing the f-list on my morning graze and I came across this from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fashionista_35 describing a workshop that is described (and I quote):
"Join Helen A. Rosburg (author/publisher) for the worst of the publishing world's slush pile, American idols Reject-style. Readers will vote for idol phenom William Hung equivalent."
I agree 110% with everythingfashionista_35 said. I agree with a lot of the things she says, actually. By the by, you should go check her LJ out, because she's really quite nifty and she knows where all the cabana boys are.
But I digress.
I think there's an element of snobbery sometimes among those of us who have, whether published or unpublished, have been writing for a long time and have set our sights on being professional. Especially if you're one of those who started trying to develop your writing when you were very, very young.
I'm one of those people. My first legitimate short story was written in the first grade for Halloween, and from there on out I just knew that this was it. Of course, my little first grader brain didn't quite comphrend what that meant, I just knew that when seeking gratification and mental satisfaction writing delivered best. It made me most excited, most happy.
So, in essence, I've been chipping away at this writing thing, molding it word by word, since I was six years old (yeah, I would've been six at Halloween that year). And even though I'm not yet thirty, that's a long damn time to do anything.
Thus, it would be quite easy for me to hold myself up as some sort of prodigy or genius if I should find myself reviewing the work of someone who is much older than me who is decidedly not as developed as I am. It sounds pretty snooty of me even to make that judgement, doesn't it?
But I don't get snooty. Because (as I recounted in my comments tofashionista_35's post) the first time I ever went to a writing workshop, I was a teenager (13, IIRC) and I was by far the youngest person in the room. And most of the women were in their 40's to 60's. A lot of them were writing for the first time because they'd never had the time or permission to do it before then. They'd been busy with several kids and jobs and taking care of husbands who very happily got to pursue their dreams at the expensive of their wives. They'd lived in a completely different era. I'm privileged to have never lived in Women Can't Do It land. I pretty much grew up knowing that women could do whatever the hell they wanted. Sure it might be tougher than it was for the menfolk, but they could do it.
A lot of those brave ladies didn't get so lcuky.
A lot of them had never told anyone about the fact that they wanted to write, and had hidden/destroyed any work they created because they were just too embarassed to let anyone find it.
So the thought of those women and their work being held up for shits and giggles makes me angry. Those women? Were fucking brave, and it didn't matter if their writing was the worst writing on the face of planet earth. It didn't matter if their characters were flat, their dialogue stiff, their plot contrived.
Because the kind of courage it takes to get up and share after hiding yourselves after decades is tremendous. And I was lucky, I never had to be that brave, never had to imagine that the best I was ever going to be able to do was sharing my work at some weekend workshop.
Me? I set my sights on the bookshelves of stores early, early on. I have my old journals and one arrogant little entry from when I was 12 (enough to make you want to smack me even today) said, "Maybe I should wait until I'm thirteen or fourteen before I write my book so it won't make older people feel bad."
Yeah, I know. I had more cheek than is probably legally allowable these days.
Because for me, the workshop was just a summer activity my grandmother had signed me up and paid for, because I had made it well known that I was a writer, would always be a writer, and loved writing.
See, how I already started with a leg up there? Not only because we had the money to pay for it (it was like, thirty bucks or something), but because my family was willing and eager to do so. I had parents and grandparents and teachers who, when they caught me writing, would smile at me and say that it was a good thing for me to do. I would get teachers who'd see my short stories and say, "Oh, she's so intelligent for writing like that!" and brag about it to my parents. Which would earn me parental approval and more "You're so smart for writing!" type praises.
Trust me, having someone say that writing makes you smart and that being smart is good does wonders for your confidence. Even if your peers don't think so.
It does a lot to reinforce your determination to be a writer, and does even more to encourage you to do it even better next time.
Well, that was sheer luck. Dumb, underserved, unasked for, unfathomable luck. And I know damn well a lot of people don't get that kind of luck.
Why?
Because in my teen years, I only knew one other person who wrote stories. She was my best friend in the world and if anyone deserved to get to take my place at the All You Can Eat Moral Support Buffet, it was her.
Because well, her mom didn't so much encourage her as just spend time popping pain pills. And sometimes she didn't even have pencils because her parents felt like school supplies weren't as important as, say, beer. One day I remember her sitting at her desk when we had free time and I thought she was pretending to write, because her only pencil was down to the point and the part where the eraser started.
I think I recall giving her a couple of mine after that. I hope I'm remembering that right. I hope I wasn't a shitty friend that wouldn't even fork over a pencil or two. Especially since I was drowning in school supplies compared to her.
And yes, at that age, her writing was not nearly as sharp or developed as mine. Because her parents didn't pay for her to go to summer workshops or take her to the library or buy her books when she came up to them and said, "Hey, mom, can I have this book?"
But she was so determined to write, more determined than me, I think. Where I had practice, she had sheer force of will to write with her little nub of a pencil on the scraps of paper she could find.
I haven't spoken to her in a while, but I hope to God she's still writing. She would make the world's most fantastic romance/adventure writer. She had a knack for coming up with great heroines. She had a better intuitive understanding of suspense, plot, and denouement than I did.
I remember her first long story that she handed to me, and I still sort of secretly cheer for Kelly, the brave, plucky hero who escapes a wicked parent and saves an orphan while doing it. I think a car blows up in that story, too.
But she, too, one day, posited to me the possibility that she might get published. Her understanding of it wasn't as sophisticated as mine, because I had a copy of an old Writer's Market at home which I earmarked and read like it was the damn bible and she thought that you just went up to Nashville (closest big city), walked into an office somewhere and said, "Here's my book."
We actually got into a fight about that because I tried to explain how it worked to the best of my adolescent knowledge, and I think I came off as condescending and mean. God I hope I didn't do permanent mental damage by putting her off of the idea of publishing. In my defense, I didn't want her to get her feelings hurt when she discovered that things didn't quite operate that way.
But what if she had found a way to type up the story and submit it? It might have happened. If she'd found her way to our school's computer lab. I certainly (with my well practiced computer geekery) would've helped her type and print it. I certainly would have, if we hadn't fought about it, loaned her my Writer's Market (which was a decade old and used to be my mom's) and helped her look up which person to send it to.
Thinking of some sleezebag holding up that story, that precious, hard-earned story and, maybe even, taking it to a workshop at a conference and laughing at it so people could say "Look how superior we all are in this room to this idiot!" - it really gets my goat. Because that sleezebag has no idea of the mountains she had to climb just to get ANY story written.
I'm not saying that every bad submission comes with a sob story. Some are careless. Some are downright stupid. There are some people who are just full of themselves and don't listen to anyone and think they're entitled to be praised and published. Feel free to mock the stupid, but make sure it is stupidity and not just a lack of know how.
Not all bad submissions are sent off in bad faith. Some are the best work a writer has, and that deserves some respect. Because you know what? Nobody is really superior. There's always at least a handful of writers who are better than you, no matter who you are. And that means there are always at least a handful of people who could hold you up to the light and laugh at your best efforts and make you wish you'd never committed words to paper.
Or, the short version: Don't be an ass. You don't know what went into that submission and you, too, suck like an electrolux in comparison to other people.
fashionista_35 describing a workshop that is described (and I quote):"Join Helen A. Rosburg (author/publisher) for the worst of the publishing world's slush pile, American idols Reject-style. Readers will vote for idol phenom William Hung equivalent."
I agree 110% with everything
fashionista_35 said. I agree with a lot of the things she says, actually. By the by, you should go check her LJ out, because she's really quite nifty and she knows where all the cabana boys are. But I digress.
I think there's an element of snobbery sometimes among those of us who have, whether published or unpublished, have been writing for a long time and have set our sights on being professional. Especially if you're one of those who started trying to develop your writing when you were very, very young.
I'm one of those people. My first legitimate short story was written in the first grade for Halloween, and from there on out I just knew that this was it. Of course, my little first grader brain didn't quite comphrend what that meant, I just knew that when seeking gratification and mental satisfaction writing delivered best. It made me most excited, most happy.
So, in essence, I've been chipping away at this writing thing, molding it word by word, since I was six years old (yeah, I would've been six at Halloween that year). And even though I'm not yet thirty, that's a long damn time to do anything.
Thus, it would be quite easy for me to hold myself up as some sort of prodigy or genius if I should find myself reviewing the work of someone who is much older than me who is decidedly not as developed as I am. It sounds pretty snooty of me even to make that judgement, doesn't it?
But I don't get snooty. Because (as I recounted in my comments to
fashionista_35's post) the first time I ever went to a writing workshop, I was a teenager (13, IIRC) and I was by far the youngest person in the room. And most of the women were in their 40's to 60's. A lot of them were writing for the first time because they'd never had the time or permission to do it before then. They'd been busy with several kids and jobs and taking care of husbands who very happily got to pursue their dreams at the expensive of their wives. They'd lived in a completely different era. I'm privileged to have never lived in Women Can't Do It land. I pretty much grew up knowing that women could do whatever the hell they wanted. Sure it might be tougher than it was for the menfolk, but they could do it. A lot of those brave ladies didn't get so lcuky.
A lot of them had never told anyone about the fact that they wanted to write, and had hidden/destroyed any work they created because they were just too embarassed to let anyone find it.
So the thought of those women and their work being held up for shits and giggles makes me angry. Those women? Were fucking brave, and it didn't matter if their writing was the worst writing on the face of planet earth. It didn't matter if their characters were flat, their dialogue stiff, their plot contrived.
Because the kind of courage it takes to get up and share after hiding yourselves after decades is tremendous. And I was lucky, I never had to be that brave, never had to imagine that the best I was ever going to be able to do was sharing my work at some weekend workshop.
Me? I set my sights on the bookshelves of stores early, early on. I have my old journals and one arrogant little entry from when I was 12 (enough to make you want to smack me even today) said, "Maybe I should wait until I'm thirteen or fourteen before I write my book so it won't make older people feel bad."
Yeah, I know. I had more cheek than is probably legally allowable these days.
Because for me, the workshop was just a summer activity my grandmother had signed me up and paid for, because I had made it well known that I was a writer, would always be a writer, and loved writing.
See, how I already started with a leg up there? Not only because we had the money to pay for it (it was like, thirty bucks or something), but because my family was willing and eager to do so. I had parents and grandparents and teachers who, when they caught me writing, would smile at me and say that it was a good thing for me to do. I would get teachers who'd see my short stories and say, "Oh, she's so intelligent for writing like that!" and brag about it to my parents. Which would earn me parental approval and more "You're so smart for writing!" type praises.
Trust me, having someone say that writing makes you smart and that being smart is good does wonders for your confidence. Even if your peers don't think so.
It does a lot to reinforce your determination to be a writer, and does even more to encourage you to do it even better next time.
Well, that was sheer luck. Dumb, underserved, unasked for, unfathomable luck. And I know damn well a lot of people don't get that kind of luck.
Why?
Because in my teen years, I only knew one other person who wrote stories. She was my best friend in the world and if anyone deserved to get to take my place at the All You Can Eat Moral Support Buffet, it was her.
Because well, her mom didn't so much encourage her as just spend time popping pain pills. And sometimes she didn't even have pencils because her parents felt like school supplies weren't as important as, say, beer. One day I remember her sitting at her desk when we had free time and I thought she was pretending to write, because her only pencil was down to the point and the part where the eraser started.
I think I recall giving her a couple of mine after that. I hope I'm remembering that right. I hope I wasn't a shitty friend that wouldn't even fork over a pencil or two. Especially since I was drowning in school supplies compared to her.
And yes, at that age, her writing was not nearly as sharp or developed as mine. Because her parents didn't pay for her to go to summer workshops or take her to the library or buy her books when she came up to them and said, "Hey, mom, can I have this book?"
But she was so determined to write, more determined than me, I think. Where I had practice, she had sheer force of will to write with her little nub of a pencil on the scraps of paper she could find.
I haven't spoken to her in a while, but I hope to God she's still writing. She would make the world's most fantastic romance/adventure writer. She had a knack for coming up with great heroines. She had a better intuitive understanding of suspense, plot, and denouement than I did.
I remember her first long story that she handed to me, and I still sort of secretly cheer for Kelly, the brave, plucky hero who escapes a wicked parent and saves an orphan while doing it. I think a car blows up in that story, too.
But she, too, one day, posited to me the possibility that she might get published. Her understanding of it wasn't as sophisticated as mine, because I had a copy of an old Writer's Market at home which I earmarked and read like it was the damn bible and she thought that you just went up to Nashville (closest big city), walked into an office somewhere and said, "Here's my book."
We actually got into a fight about that because I tried to explain how it worked to the best of my adolescent knowledge, and I think I came off as condescending and mean. God I hope I didn't do permanent mental damage by putting her off of the idea of publishing. In my defense, I didn't want her to get her feelings hurt when she discovered that things didn't quite operate that way.
But what if she had found a way to type up the story and submit it? It might have happened. If she'd found her way to our school's computer lab. I certainly (with my well practiced computer geekery) would've helped her type and print it. I certainly would have, if we hadn't fought about it, loaned her my Writer's Market (which was a decade old and used to be my mom's) and helped her look up which person to send it to.
Thinking of some sleezebag holding up that story, that precious, hard-earned story and, maybe even, taking it to a workshop at a conference and laughing at it so people could say "Look how superior we all are in this room to this idiot!" - it really gets my goat. Because that sleezebag has no idea of the mountains she had to climb just to get ANY story written.
I'm not saying that every bad submission comes with a sob story. Some are careless. Some are downright stupid. There are some people who are just full of themselves and don't listen to anyone and think they're entitled to be praised and published. Feel free to mock the stupid, but make sure it is stupidity and not just a lack of know how.
Not all bad submissions are sent off in bad faith. Some are the best work a writer has, and that deserves some respect. Because you know what? Nobody is really superior. There's always at least a handful of writers who are better than you, no matter who you are. And that means there are always at least a handful of people who could hold you up to the light and laugh at your best efforts and make you wish you'd never committed words to paper.
Or, the short version: Don't be an ass. You don't know what went into that submission and you, too, suck like an electrolux in comparison to other people.
