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JCW Stevenson wrote:• Just a quick question Jay, have you worked as a publishing agent or publisher's editor yourself? Have you had your work published by a major publishing house that has put hard copies on shelves? I have only seen your stuff on Amazon and Double Dragon (an ebook outfit).
In other words, since you can't refute the words of the people I quote on writing you hope to denigrate me so as to justify your own views.
Sorry to disappoint you, but I've spent time with agents like Donald Mass and Noah Lukeman, plus others, discussing what they look for, and reject—and why. I've "sat at the feet" of professional and successful editors like Sol Stein and Michael Seidman as they dispensed their views on the industry. I've sat at the lunch table with authors like Jennifer Crusie (a really funny lady) and other pros. That doesn't make me an authority, of course, but the views I express are what I got from them, not my own.
As for my publishers, you really don't want to compare my qualifications for talking about the publication process with your own. And this certainly isn't the venue to declare a pissing contest. If you have issues with what I say pick a point and have at it. For about the tenth time: this is a place for talking about the message, not the messenger.
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Julie Artz wrote:• I didn't suggest that it's possible to learn to write just by reading fiction, only that it's an important part of the process. And I stand by that. I doubt anyone has ever become a successful writer without first becoming a careful reader.
It's kind of like the chicken and egg thing, though. If we didn't love reading would we have decided to write? And doesn't that mean that pretty much everyone who tries to write fiction has that love and background in reading as a constant? Of course reading matters. It shapes our perception of what works and what doesn't, as far as ours own tastes. But if it worked as a significant part of learning the process we would all be successful. And the universities wouldn't have reason to offer degrees in writing fiction. Right?
What I find funny is that the idea that reading as a primary tool in learning to write is a factoid that's been floating around among hopeful writers for more than a hundred years. And it sounds quite reasonable—and comforting because it makes it appear that since we do read omnivorously, we have only to have a good plot idea, some natural talent, and a bit of luck. But the idea didn't originate as a help and encouragement for writers. It was a distraction, put forward by writers to mislead hopeful writers and protect the livelihood of those making their living through their writing. This article is an interesting look at some of the history of writing, and writing education: http://openscholarship.wustl.edu/etd/1087/ (it might be nice of the programmers for this site could get the quote feature working)
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Joined: 6/7/2013
Posts: 1356
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Hi guys--I am not loving the hostile tone of the conversation here. This space that must stay respectful. If we can't successfully redirect the thread back to an open, inclusive discussion about different approaches to reviewing, without calling out at others who disagree, than I will need to close this thread, which I so hate to do since I want to see how other people will weigh in on the original question posed.
Keep it productive--and don't forget that we are all after the same thing--how to write a better book.
-Lucy
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Joined: 2/24/2014
Posts: 19
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Thanks Lucy. As amusing as I have found the e-penii swordplay to be, I'll leave it there.
I'm actually happy with the reviews I have left as I do try to make sure it is as helpful as possible without being belittling. As always though, I'm open to new ways and ideas.
On Writing is something I need to find a copy of. It's been on my 'Must Read' list for a long time now. I'm not a Stephen King fan per se but I love the way he writes and there's very few of his stories I didn't enjoy. On Writing seems like an excellent insight into both the craft and his own mind.
Writing was not a career I chose; I fell into it after leaving my trade to study engineering and finding my maths was not strong enough. I took a job doing maintenance analysis which saw me working next to a tech writer. It snowballed from there. The reason why I was asked at the time to work as a tech writer was because my ability with written English was noticed by those I worked with.
As a child and young adult I was an avid reader. I'd consume a novel a week. At the school bookathon my English teacher called me a liar when I listed all the things I had read that month. When I gave a synopsis of each one on the spot I got an apology in front of the whole class 
Being an avid reader DID give me a good place to start, and it DID give me some ability. Would a classic education in creative writing help? Of course! But not all of us have the time or money to learn in a university. Now that I have been working for a few decades I can say with confidence the masters in their fields of practical application were all self-taught, or studied later in life. Anyone of intelligence can pick up a book and study the style, and recreate it in their own words. It's not rocket surgery or brain science.
I went to uni to gain (successfully) a business degree much later in life. What university study gives isn't a toolkit. Tech colleges do that. University gives you a lesson on HOW to learn. How to extract the nuances and specifics of a topic, but not always how to make best use of it.
I absolutely reject the concept that to be successful one must gain a formal education in a specific field. Not to mention if one was to take the high road on this one would have to reject Webster's Big Book of Spelling Mistakes and Abused English.
The best engineers I have ever worked with were all something else before hand - the worst had all gone straight from school, attended Engineering Arrogance 101, then straight to a consultancy. Useless individuals.
Very few of my favourite authors have had a formal writing education. Learning is organic. We learn by three main methods; Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic (VAK). Most of us are visual and kinesthetic learners. That is, we learn by seeing and doing. Bashing out 100,000 words of pure garbage for NaNoWriMo won't make a bestseller, but it does teach how to sit at the computer and type for four hours a night. Re-reading it and comparing with the structure and pacing of a favourite dog-eared book gives a stark comparison of what went wrong. Having a go, then having to have another go once the problem has been circled in red ink is as good as any lecture hall full of glassy-eyed students sucking on tins of Red Bull trying to stay awake.
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Joined: 1/23/2014
Posts: 44
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must... resist ... must ... n o t r e p l y ... DAMM-IT-OK-I'LL-REPLY ...
Have to say I agree with Mr JCW. I spent many years as a musician, and achieved a fair amount of success (well enough to pay the rent and feed almost myself, which is a massive achievement for a muso), toured the country and played with some of the best that Australia has to offer. All without have a lesson and zero formal education in the field of music. NB. that statement isn't intended as a 'My shit don't stink'
The guitarist in one of the bands, who was also a concert pianist (much better than me in every way). He was the one who said that (in regard to my musical abilities that is) "Because I don't know the rules, I don't care when I break them". What happened over the next few years was that I started learning where the rules were, then I knew when and more importantly why I was breaking them.
Now I know that this is digressing a little from the topic of reviewing, but to a certain degree, can this logic be applied to all aspects of creativity. Rolling your sleeves up and having a bloody good crack at it with the right encouragement can teach you much more than the classroom. That's the way life has worked in my case.
To use an analogy (groan.. here we go) are we a Mozart or a Beethoven, are we The Beetles, or Pink Floyd ... or are we Sid Vicious. Most of us will probably stay in the garage making an god-awful noise but having fun, but occasionally, the sex pistols may arrive and really shake things up.
With that I shall take my union jack ripped jeans, Dark side of the moon t-shirt, beret and hipster glasses, go and listen to some Jazz while drinking fine wine in a pint glass, with biscuits, and do some writing.
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Joined: 11/17/2011
Posts: 1016
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Yellowcake, I love your spirit. I will most definitely look at your work.
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I am one of those Professor Harold Hill Think Method writers also. If that means I'm an old fool, so be it. I'm waiting to hear back from my editor. If she proclaims my book to be a disaster, even after all the changes I've made to it, I won't hide it. I won't cherry-pick. I'll give the good, the bad, and the ugly. Then I'll try to get my hard head to absorb the lesson.
--edited by Mimi Speike on 4/9/2014, 11:21 PM--
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Joined: 1/23/2014
Posts: 44
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HEH .. Thanks Mimi  prepare to be Thoroughly underwhelmed.
NB: by my writing that is ...
--edited by Yellowcake on 4/9/2014, 8:44 PM--
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JCW Stevenson wrote: • But not all of us have the time or money to learn in a university.
Interesting. I recommend some specific books on writing, and from that you get that I'm suggesting that people have to go to the university?
Sophistry isn't my favorite debating tool.
• Now that I have been working for a few decades I can say with confidence the masters in their fields of practical application were all self-taught, or studied later in life.
An unsupportable assertion, I'm afraid. Take a look at the backgrounds for the top ten on the NYT best seller list and you'll find you're wrong.
• Anyone of intelligence can pick up a book and study the style, and recreate it in their own words.
Of course, no one in any post, has suggested a book on style. Are we discussing the same subject? . If you're trying to refute what I say you really should address what I actually say.
• I went to uni to gain (successfully) a business degree much later in life. What university study gives isn't a toolkit.
Math isn't a tool? That's part of liberal arts. Structural analysis isn't a tool? Physics isn't the tool of astronomy, mechanical engineering and a host of others? If you didn't gain any of the tools of business why in the hell did you waste four years in the university?
• Tech colleges do that. University gives you a lesson on HOW to learn. How to extract the nuances and specifics of a topic, but not always how to make best use of it.
Tech colleges? Like the University of Pennsylvania, which offers lots of engineering and science disciplines? It's not a university? Might come as a surprise to them, I think. The Ivy league universities, too. Psychology also comes under the umbrella of Liberal Arts, and my son-in-law is currently studying hard to acquire the tools of that profession (and top in his class I'm happy to say). When you take a degree in fiction writing you're not screwing around for four years. You're working damn hard. And when you graduate you're writing on a professional level. Fail to do that and no degree. You figure you can get all that knowledge by sitting in front of your keyboard typing, reading books from the library, or asking people who know no more than you how to write for publication?
• I absolutely reject the concept that to be successful one must gain a formal education in a specific field.
People rejected the idea of powered flight, and many other things. And they sincerely believed that to be true. A sincere belief in anything has no influence on it being either an accurate or inaccurate belief. But I do have to wonder why you're announcing a strong objection to something that no one has suggested as being necessary.
• The best engineers I have ever worked with were all something else before hand - the worst had all gone straight from school, attended Engineering Arrogance 101, then straight to a consultancy. Useless individuals.
An an engineer of forty years experience, and one who worked his way to chief engineer of the company, I have to say that my experience is people who don't have the skills to be an engineer are incompetent to do the job. Does an engineer who changed careers bring more experience to the job? Sure. But so what? Before they could work in the field they had to acquire the skills an engineer is required to know.
And that applies to writing as well. You may have been a doctor, a scientist, business major or a journalist, but if you expect to write fiction and sell it you damn well better learn what editors say yes to, and how to write in a way to get that yes. If it was obvious everyone would be a successful writer. Think of how many people here trained to do something other than writing fiction. If you're right they would be successful writers now. But they're not, because fiction for the oprinted word isn't something we learned to create in our school years. It's not something we learned by reading for pleasure, any more than watching TV makes us screenwriters.
• Very few of my favourite authors have had a formal writing education.
I'd be interested to know how mentioning that unknown number of unnamed writers, are selling their work to unspecified publishers today, relates in a meaningful way to needing to know the craft of the writer, and how to acquire it?
• Bashing out 100,000 words of pure garbage for NaNoWriMo won't make a bestseller, but it does teach how to sit at the computer and type for four hours a night.
Seems to me that those four hours a night might be a teeny bit more worthwhile if the one typing was doing more than practicing how to write badly.
• Re-reading it and comparing with the structure and pacing of a favourite dog-eared book gives a stark comparison of what went wrong.
If true we'd all be regularly selling our work. We all read. We all compare our work to the books we like. But still, a quick check of the various genres here, with books chosen at random, showed that out of ten books:
Not one had mastered the rudiments of POV. The author was telling the story 100%.
Not one of them gave the reader context for the action in progress because they never made the reader aware of where they were in time and space, who they were as a person, or what was going on, before expecting that reader to understand the action in progress.
Not one was told in real-time.
Not one was told in an emotion-based and character-centric way. They were all author centric and fact based—exactly the way we were taught to write n school. And as a result, they informed, but didn't entertain or engage the reader.
Those four items are the most basic elements of fiction for the page. They appear on the first page of most novels and every page thereafter. Were what you suggest a successful method of learning craft at least some of them would have picked up on at least one of those points.
As someone who owned a manuscript critiquing service I can tell you that the vast majority of what I saw suffered the same problem because no one ever tells us that there's as much to learn about writing fiction as there was in learning the nonfiction techniques we're trained in during our public education years.
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Joined: 2/24/2014
Posts: 19
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Thanks Jay, I'm glad you agree and appreciate your support.
Mimi, keep us posted! It's an interesting journey.
Yellowcake, I've been interested in where you are taking your stories ever since you first mentioned them. Don't give up on them!
Tim the Toothpaste Troll is flat out hilarious and I really want to see it as an animated version
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If someone is reviewing a short story or novel of mine as intended help towards writing/polishing for abetter draft, I stop listening if all they have are ideas about what to be taken out.
My biggest disappointment was face-to-face workshop where one of the people in the room (supposedly a professional writer) refused to say anything about my work because religion was part of the plot/theme.
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Joined: 6/7/2013
Posts: 1356
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@Michael R Hagan--that's really great! Well done.
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Joined: 10/14/2012
Posts: 229
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Ah, it's terrible, but a pat on the back just makes my day. 
Thank you.
I'm giggling to myself about the current debate with Jay... I crossed swords with him myself on a few occasions, before realising his pointers were all true. (I'm still not saying I agree with all the factors he informed me the industry deem necessary to make a contemporary and 'marketable book'; just that they do indeed demand these principles.)
I huffed, fumed, cursed and stamped my feet in indignation many-a-time at his reviews, preferring to accept praise or any advice leading me to tweak the work, rather than undertake a total re-write. The fact is everything he told me was correct. I changed enough of it to be accepted by a publisher...and what I hadn't already changed was soon highlighted by first the developmental editor and then the line editor.
At the time I thought 'Okay, so mark me down on the style, but why on the plot if it's just the style bringing the work down; but in all honesty, as he said at the time, if the format, adjective count, sentences starting with pro-noun ratio, writer's journey aspects, perspective, word efficiency, sinfully passive phrases etc, etc aren't acceptable to the professionals, nothing else will be judged... at least in my painful experience.
If it aint 'right', after making a lengthy and time consuming personalised submission, only the first paragraph of the sample chapters will be read.
Even really simple checks can get the work slushed... How many appearances of the words 'that' and 'had' are in the work? This sounds bonkers, but most of us, including me, initially have too many by a factor of four or so. How often do dialogue tag add-ons 'tell' what the dialogue has already 'shown'? Is an urgent desire expressed, for the reader to empathise, with with the introduction of each character?
I fought some of these trends, but sometimes I was plain wrong... maybe at times I was right too, and could have enjoyed being so while my book languished propping up my bed. In my view, Jay doesn't express subjective opinions, but conveys those of an uncompromising industry, and risks being shot as the messenger, in the process.
I could never be so forward in delivering 'brutal facts' to aspiring writers like myself... I have too much of a need to be liked and will mix in many compliments after searching for where they might be appropriate. This is selfish, however, and serves only to dilute the message.
I'll probably still do it.
Anyway, funny how so many comments here end up talking about Jay... What a force of nature he must be.
Lastly.....
Mimi, I'm getting jealous seeing your comments about loving the spirit of Yellowcake... I thought I was your boy!!!
JCW, "I'm glad you agree and appreciate your support." ... masterful!
Lucy, thanks again. I may yet sell books numbering in the single digits, but I do love being congratulated.
Jay, I'm sending you my next book to review when I'm 3 pages in rather than 43 chapters... it'll save a heck of a lot of time.
Cheers, all,
Mike
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Joined: 11/17/2011
Posts: 1016
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Mike, you still are my boy, and I will be the first to buy your rehabbed book. I gather many changes have been made sine my downloaded version. Am I right? And I am really delighted to hear that your developmental editor did you a lot of good. For I believe she is the editor I have hired to assess my work. Are you referring to Melissa?
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Joined: 2/24/2014
Posts: 19
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Thanks Michael.
I believe that good ideas can come from anywhere, and good advice is good advice even when delivered in blunt or even an arrogant manner. People on a high horse are annoying, but I recognise how much fun it is to be up there!
I try to make sure that my learning and the advice I give is grounded in experience in some way.
"If I appear tall to you,
it is because of the empty beer carton on my head".
*Reason for Editing*
Zombies
--edited by JCW Stevenson on 4/13/2014, 5:33 PM--
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Joined: 10/14/2012
Posts: 229
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Hi Mimi
Sorry for not responding sooner, the site only lets me log on occasionally. I can read comments, but often can make no reply... That would make me the perfect adversary to argue with online.
We have different editors, Dave Schlosser was my developmental and Raymond Focstay is my line editor. A ways back Melissa did review the work... I still carry the bruises and mental trauma to prove it.
Can't please everybody. But it does show that editorial preferences are subjective... I always wait 'til not one, but several people tell me I'm dead before lying down.
Best of luck,
Mike
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Joined: 11/17/2011
Posts: 1016
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If Melissa takes me apart, even after the changes I've made, I'll pull what I can live with out of her remarks (same thing I did here) and go from there. What else can I, or any of us, do?
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In two weeks, I'll either be crowing or crying in my beer, on here. I'd better stock up on Sam Adams, just in case.
--edited by Mimi Speike on 4/21/2014, 10:33 PM--
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Joined: 11/17/2011
Posts: 1016
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Anyway, Michael, thank you for reminding me that even if Melissa likes my book, it may be because I gave her a certain kind of storytelling that you did not, that is her special liking. So I won't get too excited. You've written a potential bestseller. I've written something that may appeal to a few nut-cases.
--edited by Mimi Speike on 4/21/2014, 10:34 PM--
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Joined: 10/14/2012
Posts: 229
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I'll settle for my fellow nut-cases myself.
If we band together, the world is our oyster!
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Joined: 6/7/2013
Posts: 1356
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Hi Mike--I've been out for a bit on vacation but I am back now and just seeing your note about only being able to log on to BC occasionally. I wonder what's up! Will you send me an email at support@bookcountry.com?
Lucy
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