A time-travelling...swizzlestick??

Because this needs to be shared with everyone and because we all need a laugh before finals.

Here is a link to the review we were talking about in the meeting today.

Do be warned that the reviewer is writing about erotica - and bad erotica at that. If you are at work, easily shocked, disturbed by metaphors that have gone so far into bad they're coming out near silly, or just freaked out by a time-traveling toilet stall, I wouldn't read this. If you're fine with all of the above (and are at home or have a tolerant boss), go right ahead. Highly entertaining.

Newness

During the summer of '07, I needed a good beach/commute book, so I picked up my roommate's copy of Company, a "late capitalist novel" by Max Barry. It sounded like a ripoff of Palahniuk, but it ended up being really fun and fairly interesting. The twist at the end was good -- I'm always delighted when authors plot suspense well.

Somewhat less surprisingly, Max Barry (also author of Syrup and Jennifer Government) is also a decent blogger. And one of his nuggets of writing advice, from an older entry, is posted above my desk:

I reacted to my Syrup rejections by writing a standard, genre thriller. It was terrible. And I learned that you never improve anything by making it less original. It’s the opposite: the worst thing writing can be is not new [bold mine -RP].

I’m convinced this isn’t just me. I think everybody wants newness. Editors, agents, readers: we all want new plots, new ideas, new ways of looking at the world. Nobody wants to get twenty pages into a book and know where it’s going, or even feel too much like they’ve seen all this before. Even within a genre’s iron-clad conventions, we want twists, surprises, and reinventions.

Young writers in particular can sometimes try to crawl inside a pre-conceived box labeled “novel” or “screenplay,” and end up with something far less interesting than if they’d forged their own path. I’m not saying you want to hit the other extreme, and pursue a lone, bizarre vision with no regard for how it reads. But you must nurture the things that make your story and your writing unique—that make you unique, since writing is letting people crawl around inside your head. Billions of people can write a sentence. Why should I bother reading yours, unless they’re different?

I read this whenever I'm tempted to give up on writing smart fantasy because I'm afraid it won't sell. First of all, I need to shut up and start writing. But more importantly, Barry makes the point that editors and readers want something new, even if the bookshelves don't suggest that. The more cynical (and publishing-savvy) among us may respond that, yes, they're looking for something new, but what they really want is the new Next Big Thing that will sell millions of copies and have midnight releases.

That said, it really is good advice. I don't want to read the same short story (or fantasy novel!) over and over again. I don't want to write the same story, either.

Any thoughts?

(Cross-posted at I'm Writing)

Back Online

Hi all.

Some of you were (questionably) lucky to be around for my semi-coherent discussion of what I did with my summer when I was interning with a literary agent. I think at the time I promised to post the useful, non-rambling bits to the blog, along with a few links.

I have done this - sort of. Meaning, I put together a lot of information about what I do as an assistant in an agency, what an agency actually does, and how that relates to the publishing industry in the first place. Only thing is, I didn't post it here.

What I actually did was tinkered with the code on my other blog so that it would accept expandable posts (look, there were like six pages of material...you did NOT want to see that all posted at once) and stored all of my notes there. You should mosey on over and check it out.* Maybe at some point in the future I'll see about getting some more specific examples of Bad Query Letter/Good Query Letter if anyone's interested.

Because, you know, reading about publishing and/or messing around with HTML and style sheets is a lot more fun than finals.

*If I figure out how to modify the style sheet for this blog, I will move everything over here, I promise.