I finished listening to my first Stuart Woods book today. For some reason I didn't have the last twenty minutes or so. I have to say that I didn't really miss them. There was only one way for the silly thing to end. This wasn't a courtroom book, so I had to figure that the crook must die.
I went looking at reviews at Amazon and interpolated that he has actually written some decent books. Capital Crimes was consistently reviewed as crap by fans and first timers alike. The stereotypes were simply jawdropping. I was fascinated by the sheer audacity of it's awfulness and I was not alone.
Posted to Books at September 29, 2004 9:01 PMHow do they get these things published? I just don't get it. Can you imagine being a copy editor for one of those publishers? Drivel, day in and day out. Okay, it's a paycheck, but aaarrrggh.
I'm especially rabid about poor writing this morning because I have just spent a day and a half proofing and editing and rewriting a really sloppy draft that came over from public affairs. How many times can a person use the word important in two lines? three. And you know, I don't think a donor publication is the appropriate place to describe an ostomy and its function. And when you reference a journal article, please include the month and year. If you're going to discuss organism development, define it. And on and on with multiple punctuation errors for ... well, gee, I don't know how many pages because they aren't numbered!
I understand that this writer gets her feelings hurt when she is heavily edited. My response is "if you don't want to be edited, don't write." Or write well. Or don't send me first drafts masquerading as final copies.
Whew. Okay. Here's a recommendation: use some birthday money to buy the audio (CD) version of Prey by Crichton. A slow start, but it's good and the reader is outstanding. They had a copy at the secondhand bookstore over on Neco-Perrin.
Back to work. Love, Mom
Posted by: Susan McJilton at September 30, 2004 10:05 AMRegarding the subject of writing:
"We hear a great deal of lamentation these days about writers having all taken themselves to the colleges and universities where they live decorously instead of going out and getting firsthand information about life. The fact is that anybody who has survived childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can't make something out of a little experience, you probably won't be able to make it out of a lot. The writer's business is to contemplate experience, not to be merged in it.
Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."
From an article by Flannery O'Connor in The Writer, October 1969.