Call me Ishmael. (Hmm, wasted here: I should start off a novel with that sentence. Begin again…)
Call me impatient, but, as a fledgling editor and publisher, I wish to make the following remarks:
I have recently taken to surfing the “shared works” section of this web-site, making comments, suggesting improvements here and there. This takes a certain amount of time, thought, and care. It is rather frustrating to see how posters of the original work often don’t reply to all the comments that are made… not even to the point of a “thumbs up”.
I honestly don’t think that I’m being ego-centric or self-pitying here. Well-thought-out comments by other writers (Lorraine, Adrian, and Wilhelmina spring to mind) seem to lie around being ignored by the very people that they’re trying to help. I can imagine these helpful commenters asking themselves “Why do I bother???”
Merely READING these comments and making a mental note of them DOESN’T help the commenters to know that their efforts haven’t been in vain. A “thumbs up” does NOT carry a signature. I have given out several “thumbs up” to X on Y’s “shared work”. X might ASSUME that that’s Y “thanking them” for the comment, but it isn’t. Only a reply will do that.
This is a friendly site, where you’ll find OTHER writers willing to offer advice on YOUR work. Some of them – like Lorraine – earn money by editing, but spend a LOT of time on this web-site offering FREE editing. It seems to me ungrateful to not at least thank them [split infinitive there!] for their time… even if you don’t agree with the advice. And if you don’t agree, why not say so? A profitable discussion might come out of that.
It’s a shame that this site doesn’t advise us (send us an e-mail) when somebody has made a comment on our “shared work”… as they do when someone sends us a private message. But Admin have their hands full running this site. They ARE working on improvements. In the meantime, is it too much to ask each one of us to check up on – and REPLY to – well-meaning comments by fellow users?
It doesn’t take TOO much time to look in once a week on your own “shared work”. A LOT less time than it took [especially] Lorraine to offer her excellent advice.
(Speaking of not taking too much time, I’m going to drag in a red herring: Please consider contributing to Emilie’s “writing game” project. https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/question/view/2644 After reading the rules there and at https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/question/view/2645 [shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes, tops], you only have to add 3 sentences at a time to help create a novel! Pop in whenever you have a spare 3 minutes. It sounds like fun… a way to relax from the seriousness and tedium of slogging over your own novel or struggling with your covering letter to agents. So far, we’ve only got 9 sentences: hardly enough for a novel. If you don’t like the subject matter or the style of what’s already been written… CHANGE it!!! Be creative! Be wild! Be yourself!)
@ Paul: I WANTED to sign up on a whaler and spend Two Years Before The Mast... but only because I'm anti-whaling. I had a Fail-Safe plan for carrying out a Future Shock. I was always The Black Sheep of the family, with dreams of making it big, of Being There. My sister, Emma, had to use all her powers of Persuasion – and a great deal of common Sense And Sensibility – to make me agree that my place was Far From The Madding Crowd. So I headed back to Our Town. Then, Suddenly Last Summer, I decided to take A Passage To India, but on the way I was Kidnapped and Carrie-d off to a Treasure Island, astonishingly inhabited by all these Little Women! The Woman In White seemed to be in charge. She was motivated by Pride And Prejudice and took away The Portrait Of A Lady that I had carried around The World In My Pocket.
Those were Hard Times! My only consolation was The Diary Of A Nobody that I found in the back of a cave. Luckily, Three Men In A Boat (to say nothing of the dog) sailed by, and I was able to make The Great Escape. Boy, did I Cry “Freedom!”! The Return Of The Native was celebrated back home, and as I climbed The Thirty-Nine Steps to The Citadel, to receive a welcome home from The Mayor Of Casterbridge, and listened to The Wind In The Willows (and The Tin Drum of the mayor’s bleedin’ 6-year-old son), I decided no more to heed The Call Of The Wild. The Riddle Of The Sands can REMAIN a riddle, for all I care.
I need to get back to work! In Search Of Lost Time, I sit up until the wee small hours, through the very Heart Of Darkness, sometimes even until The Shining of the sun sends me off to bed. The Trial of that Journey To The End Of The Night (when I should really be enjoying The Big Sleep) is The Plague to me! Sleepiness makes me clumsy and Things Fall Apart. But when I start to feel the Nausea, I tell myself: “You’re really Lucky, Jim! At least your not still On The Road. I mean Lord, Jim! You’ve got the Northern Lights out the window there, and you’re safe from the Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas that you suffered back in Nineteen Eighty-Four.”
So here I am, at your service…
[Thanks to The Guardian’s “The 100 greatest novels of all time: The list” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/oct/12/features.fiction ]
Mobi Dick? A modern tale of publishing life? The analogy of a publisher as a great white whale seems apt!
Yes, Jimmy/Ishmael, it would be good to know I'm not talking into thin air when I make comments on shared works. Maybe people look at the first comments and don't expect any more.
I read Moby Dick at uni: there was an exam question on the almost psychedelic section about cutting up the whales. Passing swiftly on...
Lorraine
Jimmy, that's plagairism. Why not be original. Howabout, It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it . . .