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

[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! :)

[aunty_marion]

Yes - WRT No.67, I've often wondered why no-one put a bullet through the back of Voldemort's head. Oh, that's right: we'd only have had two books if someone had... And JKR would still be starving. *That's* why.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

OMG. Your icon. That's so true. BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

[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]

Corollary 64b. You use the word "orbs" to describe breasts or testicles. Again, instant rejection.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Any sexual organ being referred to as fruit/veg(starfruit, lemons, corgette, melons) will count as instant rejection too.

[the-sea-to.livejournal.com]

What about mongoose feet?

[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.