Hello Everybody!
Please excuse me if I rant and/or ramble; I’m well aware that I sometimes have a tendency to do just that. However, I have this ferocious burning to confess how I have stalked The Water Cooler, lurking about in the shadows.
Oh, yes! I admit to it! I would sneak in unannounced, to pilfer the juicy tidbits of information that was there for the taking. For years, I ravenously devoured the tasty morsels of knowledge that these wise sages so graciously left on the table. Likened to the proverbial thief in the middle of the night, I selfishly coveted their priceless secrets so I could greedily hone my own craft. Then at times, the pleasure of enjoying a raging debate between minds so much greater than my own bestowed upon me as if I were Royalty.
Then, when my brain could absorb no more, I would scurry back to the comforting hum of my antiquated computer; toss my pathetic manuscript onto the monitor screen, and apply the cache of intellectual wealth to my gibberish. Such drool, I realized my WIP to be!
Screaming quietly, I axed the brilliantly ignorant oxymorons, and then I dined on jumbo shrimp and enjoyed the wetness of dry wine to celebrate their obvious hollowness. Dangling participles were snipped and fell to the wayside. Passive sentences now sparked of action!! My run-on sentences ran no more. No longer was I telling a story! It was a dark and stormy night outside my window, but the words on the monitor exploded as they showed the story with visual delights, eerie sounds, exotic tastes, smooth and crunchy textures, and the smells of both lavender perfume wafting from wildflowers and the gut-wrenching stench of maggot-infested corpses.
No doubt, Dr. Frankenstein would have been proud how I breathed life into my once uninteresting bloke of a protagonist, Christian Kane. He now lives, and struts across the pages. Of course, mind you, he still has faults. One kibble I had pocketed, when nobody was watching me, warned that my characters could not be perfect as they encountered conflict, twists and turns.
Finally, six months later, and after replacing the broken delete button three times on the keyboard, my pathetic, gibberish drool had transformed into a finely polished manuscript. No longer was it the embarrassing and ugly baby I had secretly kept hidden from the outside world; caged inside a floppy disc, screaming incessantly all hours of the night, “Feed me! Feed me!”
Excited to the point where I had to cross my legs and double over, I shotgunned emails out to the big boys, explaining how they must read my manuscript which was destined to be the next NY Times Best Seller. I assured them they would make a fortune; I would be famous, and my wife would once again find me attractive and irresistible.
Sadly, they rejected me. Some were downright rude! I felt as though they had stamped ‘Failure’ on my forehead in giant black letters, before shoving my face deep in to the septic smelling muck and mire they so fondly refer to as ‘The Slush Pile’. Can you imagine? They didn’t even want to read my synopsis! Go figure.
Battered and bruised, I licked my wounds. Then I gathered up the bloody remains of my ego, took a lengthy shower, and crawled back to my sanctuary, The Cooler, where I searched feverishly until I latched on to the secrets of writing the perfect pitch letters. I let go a confident, although obnoxious I must admit, laugh, in the face of Rejection when I found the necessary wisdom. For I now tightly grasped the key to success. I felt empowered to construct the ultimate, enticing query and the compelling synopsis. One that would surely slay that arrogant and vile bastard we starving writers all dread and detest with all our might: Rejection. Simply saying that monster’s name tumults my gut into vicious spasms of dry heaves.
A few months later, after one more volley of emails, which were now ‘new and improved’, now tasty and enticing, I let go another laugh. Only this time, Ha! Ha! My boisterous laughter boasted a resonance of triumphant, on the day I got ‘The Call’!
Seriously, now. Is this not the reason we are all here? To not only study the craft of writing, but to also understand the business side? If this board did not exist, my rough draft would be taking up residency in the landfill right now or floating around as Cyber Junk, and my paranormal tale, The Legend of Rachel Petersen, would still be but a dream.
To all you other newbies and lurkers out there, heed theses wise sage’s words of wisdom!
I did, and it feels so good to finally step out of the murky shadows, tip my hat, shake their hands, and say, “Hello! I’m delighted to finally make your acquaintance. I’m...JT Baroni.”
Please excuse me if I rant and/or ramble; I’m well aware that I sometimes have a tendency to do just that. However, I have this ferocious burning to confess how I have stalked The Water Cooler, lurking about in the shadows.
Oh, yes! I admit to it! I would sneak in unannounced, to pilfer the juicy tidbits of information that was there for the taking. For years, I ravenously devoured the tasty morsels of knowledge that these wise sages so graciously left on the table. Likened to the proverbial thief in the middle of the night, I selfishly coveted their priceless secrets so I could greedily hone my own craft. Then at times, the pleasure of enjoying a raging debate between minds so much greater than my own bestowed upon me as if I were Royalty.
Then, when my brain could absorb no more, I would scurry back to the comforting hum of my antiquated computer; toss my pathetic manuscript onto the monitor screen, and apply the cache of intellectual wealth to my gibberish. Such drool, I realized my WIP to be!
Screaming quietly, I axed the brilliantly ignorant oxymorons, and then I dined on jumbo shrimp and enjoyed the wetness of dry wine to celebrate their obvious hollowness. Dangling participles were snipped and fell to the wayside. Passive sentences now sparked of action!! My run-on sentences ran no more. No longer was I telling a story! It was a dark and stormy night outside my window, but the words on the monitor exploded as they showed the story with visual delights, eerie sounds, exotic tastes, smooth and crunchy textures, and the smells of both lavender perfume wafting from wildflowers and the gut-wrenching stench of maggot-infested corpses.
No doubt, Dr. Frankenstein would have been proud how I breathed life into my once uninteresting bloke of a protagonist, Christian Kane. He now lives, and struts across the pages. Of course, mind you, he still has faults. One kibble I had pocketed, when nobody was watching me, warned that my characters could not be perfect as they encountered conflict, twists and turns.
Finally, six months later, and after replacing the broken delete button three times on the keyboard, my pathetic, gibberish drool had transformed into a finely polished manuscript. No longer was it the embarrassing and ugly baby I had secretly kept hidden from the outside world; caged inside a floppy disc, screaming incessantly all hours of the night, “Feed me! Feed me!”
Excited to the point where I had to cross my legs and double over, I shotgunned emails out to the big boys, explaining how they must read my manuscript which was destined to be the next NY Times Best Seller. I assured them they would make a fortune; I would be famous, and my wife would once again find me attractive and irresistible.
Sadly, they rejected me. Some were downright rude! I felt as though they had stamped ‘Failure’ on my forehead in giant black letters, before shoving my face deep in to the septic smelling muck and mire they so fondly refer to as ‘The Slush Pile’. Can you imagine? They didn’t even want to read my synopsis! Go figure.
Battered and bruised, I licked my wounds. Then I gathered up the bloody remains of my ego, took a lengthy shower, and crawled back to my sanctuary, The Cooler, where I searched feverishly until I latched on to the secrets of writing the perfect pitch letters. I let go a confident, although obnoxious I must admit, laugh, in the face of Rejection when I found the necessary wisdom. For I now tightly grasped the key to success. I felt empowered to construct the ultimate, enticing query and the compelling synopsis. One that would surely slay that arrogant and vile bastard we starving writers all dread and detest with all our might: Rejection. Simply saying that monster’s name tumults my gut into vicious spasms of dry heaves.
A few months later, after one more volley of emails, which were now ‘new and improved’, now tasty and enticing, I let go another laugh. Only this time, Ha! Ha! My boisterous laughter boasted a resonance of triumphant, on the day I got ‘The Call’!
Seriously, now. Is this not the reason we are all here? To not only study the craft of writing, but to also understand the business side? If this board did not exist, my rough draft would be taking up residency in the landfill right now or floating around as Cyber Junk, and my paranormal tale, The Legend of Rachel Petersen, would still be but a dream.
To all you other newbies and lurkers out there, heed theses wise sage’s words of wisdom!
I did, and it feels so good to finally step out of the murky shadows, tip my hat, shake their hands, and say, “Hello! I’m delighted to finally make your acquaintance. I’m...JT Baroni.”
