Oh.. damn. Look at number one...

[erastes]

 

Found via Hayden Thorne

50 reasons no-one wants to publish your first book.

I particularly liked:

10. They liked it better when it was called JANE EYRE and didn’t suck.

*giggling*

17. You’re not just being paranoid; there really is a vast corporate conspiracy to ensure that your revolutionary ideas never leave your parents’ basement.

Oh dear, I know people like this.

I could add a few:

51. Sentences like: "my cunt makes a disappointed queeb sound" will only make people buy it in fascinated horror.

52. Having your gay couple get married in church in 1700 is going to make the slush reader snort tea out of their nose.

54. 75 pages of wolf shagging isn't sexy.  Except to a very small slice of the world's population.

55. James Joyce was having them all on. He got away with it. You won't.

Any more?

Comments

[aunty_marion]

11. Iambic pentameter? Really?

It worked for Poul Anderson, in A Midsummer Tempest. Though he didn't write the whole thing in it, and it actually took me quite a while to realise parts of it *were*!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. Poor poor you!!!

[the-sea-to.livejournal.com]

56. No. Your sedentary desk bound banker who eats out every meal and does nothing other than work and sleep will NOT HAVE A SIX PACK AND CHISELED ABS. Deal with it. People are real.

57. Not everyone is gay. PAY ATTENTION TO THIS. SOMETIMES GAY PEOPLE HIT ON STRAIGHT PEOPLE AND GET REBUFFED. AND IT NEVER WORKS OUT. I WOULD LIKE TO SEE MORE OF THIS.

58. Not every straight person is accepting and/or homophobic. Some people genuinely don't give a shit.

59. There were times in history homosexuality was seen as normal.

60. There were times in history people would have been burned alive. Or slaughtered. Pay attention to this. It is unlikely that families would be accepting.

61. Anachronisms make the baby jesus cry. (i am a pedant)

[erastes.livejournal.com]

61. You had your 15th century sculptor doing gene therapy!!!

:)

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

*snigger*

[svilleficrecs.livejournal.com]

Dude. DUDE. When my vag makes a noise, it should usually be brief and ignored by all involved. Queefs happen. "disappointed queebs" ... Yeah. Except NO.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I love the hint of orgy in your reply. A very polite orgy.

[sleveen.livejournal.com]

My personal favourite: There’s a fine line between writing authentic regional dialogue and making all of your characters sound like stroke victims.

Which leads me back to my days as a book editor at a small local publishing company. We put out about 10 titles a year - about 6 of those were non-fiction and maybe 4 were fiction. Needless to say, being listed in Writer's Market, we got submissions of ALL kinds.

The one that stands out in my mind is the bloke who felt compelled, for some reason known only to him and his pharmaceutical provider, to write an 800-page "response" to Milton's Paradise Lost - entirely in rhyming couplets.

I declined it politely with the usual form rejection letter. But I was REALLY tempted to write, "Do you own a shredder? Please shred this and stuff it in your mattress. I'll sleep better." o_O

[erastes.livejournal.com]

1. HAGRID MUST DIE. Why didn't this happen?

800 pages. *is sporked *

[mylodon.livejournal.com]

Iz ded.

And yes to number 55. Entirely.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

It's evil of me, I know. But I do believe this.

[kethlenda.livejournal.com]

LOL, thanks for that link!

I dunno, wolf shagging seems to be the thing at the moment...oh, wait, that's werewolf shagging. ;)

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I don't mind werewolves shagging as men, but I've read scenes of them transformed into wolves shagging. Gay dogs? Not hot.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

1. Being innovative doesn’t justify writing a Civil War epic entirely in texting slang and emoticons: “ts u hor! i dnt gv dam :< !”

Curse you, Kevin Smith!

29. Everyone who attempts to load a copy of the manuscript onto their Kindle is found dead three hours later.

yeah. Just...yeah.
I can totally understand why.

And there should be more unicorn-based chase scenes (I originally typed sex scenes *headdesk*) But let's NOT have the Mystical Queen of the Unicorn Riders fall in love with Wedge Antilles again, shall we?
(My early Star Wars fanzine collection, let me show you it!)

[erastes.livejournal.com]

He stole my idea! Transgressions is TOTALLY written in Textspeak.

t kng mst dI! Trator! I h8 the king!

*snorts* We should all share our Sues online one day...

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

Having your gay couple get married in church in 1700 is going to make the slush reader snort tea out of their nose.

You mean SLASH reader, right?

Re: 55...I have believed for years that Finnegan's Wake was a very long practical joke Joyce played on the critics. Obviously, they haven't figured this out yet.

And let me add a few:

62. Your 100% Viking protagonist of your thoroughly researched historical novel is named Marcus Gabinius Naso.

63. ...and she was named after her father.

64. Your beautiful, multi-talented, magical, completely original heroine who is deeply insecure despite being loved by all and who is destined to save the world is terribly familiar to the editor. And everyone else who knows something about Fanfiction.net.

65. Your vampires don't sparkle.

66. If your wizards are so goddamned powerful and your villains so useless, why don't the wizards use their all-powerful magic to eliminate the villains in Chapter 1?

67. Seriously, is there some reason why the good guys, who have been stymied so far by the villain's invulnerability to magic, don't use a NON-magical method of killing him?

68. All of your female characters women consider a husband and babies to be the summum bonum of life, despite traits and personalities that indicate that, honestly, if they were acting like themselves and not as you the author demand, at least some of them would hate the idea.

69. Your detective who walks with a walker "runs like the wind" when the plot calls for it.

[the-sea-to.livejournal.com]

possibly a "sane" reader?

[erastes.livejournal.com]

No, meant slush - as in slush pile.

I love these. It's so true! :)

[rwday.livejournal.com]

64. Your beautiful, multi-talented, magical, completely original heroine who is deeply insecure despite being loved by all and who is destined to save the world is terribly familiar to the editor. And everyone else who knows something about Fanfiction.net.

And as a corollary - 64a. You use the word 'orbs' to describe your character's eyes 2,487 times. Instant rejection.

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

70. You wrote in vast detail about the hero penetrating the heroine's clitoris, causing the editor to cross her legs and wince in pain.

Corollary--70a. You have a seemingly male character who, for reasons of the plot, must conceive a child, and you think that the stomach or the large intestine would be great places to keep the fetus since the pseudo-hermaphrodite doesn't have a uterus.

71. Your prose is so purple, it's ultraviolet.

[zehavit-lamasu.livejournal.com]

You know... before I clicked I thought : "oh no! Not another one of those patronising HOW NOT TO PUBLISH A BOOK which contains lots of examples from books that have been published despite being full of bad "unpublishable" qalities *cough*DanBrownAnneRiceJamesJoice*cough*"... but then I actually readd it and almost died laughing XD.

....


I think it only proves that self publishing is the only road for me... if at all ^^;;.

Oh and:

"James Joyce was having them all on. He got away with it. You won't."

Tee hee hee ^_^v.

[penelopefriday.livejournal.com]

*dies at #55* It's a great excuse for me NOT to attempt Ulysses any time soon :)

And #17. Argh.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Step away from the Joyce. Really.

[dakotaflint.livejournal.com]

55. James Joyce was having them all on. He got away with it. You won't.

This made me giggle.

But not as much as: James Joyce was getting it on. He got away with it. You won't.

(I attended a lecture a couple years ago about a French psychoanalyst--Lacan--and his views on Joyce's writing...writing was what kept Joyce sane and gave him the pleasure/pain of sexual fulfillment. Or something like that. Never really thought of Joyce the same since. *g*)

[rwday.livejournal.com]

55b. Calling your novel 'literary' does not absolve it of needing a plot.

55c. Stream of consciousness writing cannot carry your entire novel unless you are Virginia Woolf or James Joyce (see 55).
55c(1). You are not Virginia Woolf either. Now shut up and learn to embrace the full stop/period key.

56. Renaming your gay boy wizards Larry and Blaco won't change the fact that your novel is converted fanfiction. (or the fact that it's crap)

57. The Great American Novel has already been written. And even if there's room for another one, trust me, it will NOT be about gay shapeshifting wereturtles.

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

*dies laughing* I LOVE #57!