How's This For A Promotion? (aka Non-Sappy Sunday #1)

Hello people of the blogosphere! Thank you for stopping by, if indeed you are actually reading this. You're so special and I love you. I. Love. You.

Anyway, I've been following a certain blogger's blog (blogger's blog...haha...that sounds so funny for some reason...) for a few weeks now, and she really knows her stuff. I don't readily admit when someone is younger than me and can write circles around what I do, but here I go:

She can write circles around me, and I like it.

She likes to go by the name Silent Pages, and quite frankly, I'm glad. As long as she's hiding behind that pseudonym, I can still have that tiny belief in the back of my mind that she might just be a figment of my imagination concocted to make me feel bad about my own writing skillz. Those things do happen, you know. Really, they do.

But, since I'm on the topic of great ideas, writing tips, and so on, I would like to pass her link on to you folks so y'all can each get an idea of what I'm trying to say. Whatever that may be.

Without further ado, I give you Silent Pages' blog. Go crazy. (Warning: Her blog posts are so amazingly long, wonderful, and wise that you will feel inadequate, but be comforted in the fact that everyone else is feeling the same way.)

It's An Animal Cracker Morning

Image via WikipediaI can hear what you're thinking. What am I doing up this early and why am I writing a post about it? I respect your questions. In fact, I may even be wondering the same things myself.

Today, dear people, is Monday. Yes, I know it's fairly obvious from the way your bodies don't want to do anything, but hear me out. It's Monday and I'm awake, coherent--or at least enough to be able to type so you can read it--and I'm currently looking at a bag of animal crackers.

What's the significance you may ask? My, my, my, aren't you all a bunch of curious folks in the morning.

Well, those animal crackers symbolize my childhood. They also make me sing "Animal Crackers in My Soup" in my head whenever I see any, but this post isn't about my humming habits.

Childhood. It's a place of myth and legend. Somehow, my mind distinguishes between those two things and separates them, yet places childhood in both categories. Children, those little people, have the ability to exist in two worlds: ours and theirs.

Our world, the world of fact and logic, is what we call reality. It makes sense and, as adults, we like it that way. Reality makes us feel like we have some control over what happens in our lives. Reality is real.

But children live part of the time in a world all their own, where reality mingles with fiction. They have imaginary friends and conduct intense tea parties with a nine course meal. Their conversations deal with the nonsensical and fantastic. Their young minds cannot grasp the fullest idea of our reality, and that is what makes them special.

As writers, we all have to nourish our inner child. We do this is many ways, mine at the moment is pretending my animals crackers are alive and have their own names, lives, friends, enemies, etc. It's childish and that's what makes it fun. It feeds my inner child. She appreciates it and it shows in my writing.

All writers have to have a sense of the childish. It's what makes writing so much fun and makes our works rich. All literature, in order to become worthwhile, must appeal to the inner children of its readers. They may not know what is so interesting about a book because they've never acknowledged their own inner children, but the thrill they get from reading something comes from that secret place.

So, thus ends my little Monday morning post. I hope it makes enough sense and perhaps even no sense at all. Have a great week!

Calm down; I can't read what you're saying over your adjectives.

I shouldn't have to say it, but somehow I feel the need to state that when I read a book, I want the experience to be a good one. Now, I often find myself in the situation that requires me to read things that aren't particularly up to my standards. That's okay. The authors are in 10th grade and haven't quite mastered the ability of cohesive writing yet.

I can't even say that I've mastered that art yet. Hey, I'm honest. It's in my DNA. As I was saying, when I pick up a book or someone says, "Hey, you like books, read this one. You'll like it. People do stuff and it makes you laugh," I expect that book to at least entertain me long enough for me to finish it. Goodness knows I've had to struggle through some books, but I'm not here to discuss them.

I'm here to discuss some authors' use of language, and to be even more concise, their use of diction. I can hear your brains whirling trying to recall the exact definition that your 11th grade English teacher drilled into your adolescent brain all those years ago (or not depending on your age.)

Diction = word choice. Some people, like myself, use a fairly average vocabulary in their day to day lives with bursts of dollar words to keep other people on their toes. I've been told too many times in my short life that I need to speak in "simpler" terms because the people in my life can't understand me. And that's okay. I understand where they are coming from, and I've simplified for their benefit with only a few slip-ups now and then after reading an Austen novel.

But, when I'm reading a book, I follow a certain set of expectations. I like it to be well-written (duh), to use terms most people will understand, and to keep me entertained. It's not a list that should scare any authors.

I do not like to read novels that feel like a giant info-dump right into my brain, or that require me to slow down my reading pace in order to understand what's happening. I look on books like those as tragedies. Sadly, there have been a number of tragedies in recent days.

The tragic tome that sparked this little reflection was an excerpt from a book (I won't name it or the author) and the overwhelming use of adjectives and adverbs. It really threw me off when I first started reading it and that is something that isn't easily done. I've been reading on the college level since I was in grade school. At first, I merely tried to adjust my mind to the fact that I was getting deluged with tons of sensory details. Way too many. Then I realized that it wasn't just the diction and syntax that was off, it was the style as well.

I'm not normally one for nitpicky things when it comes to an author's delivery or writing style, but as I was reading, I couldn't help but be slightly nauseated by the blatant "telling" that the author was doing in the story. Sure, it's in first person, but when the reader is told every few paragraphs that the MC went through something big and that was why he or she was the way he or she was, it makes the entire plot tedious.

So very tedious. Honestly, I couldn't even get through the second chapter. There was so much more that I could have commented on, but...I don't have the energy. I just want to know this:

How the hell did that person get that book published in the first place?



Addendum:
I totally went and found out the answer to my own question before posting this blog entry. Self-publishing. *Le Sigh* For the love of all things written, people, please do not self-publish your books unless you are a very good editor or you have an agent (which means someone in the business actually thinks you can write and your book might be good) and you've exhausted all other options. Otherwise, just...don't do what that author did. I'm begging you. My brain folds are still trying to recover. I'm not making any guarantees, it's too early to tell, but I think I may be allergic to adverbs. Or bad books.