I'm ruined

Serena Casey · Dec 29, 2006

Now that I have been visiting AW for several months, I can no longer read in peace without my newfound internal editor interrupting! The book I just started has a serious case of As You Know Bob and I can hardly stand it. I might have noticed it before if it was very blatant, but now that I've been trained to recognize all these writers' foibles, I can't help but notice them. I'm ruined forever. :e2bummed:

Perks · Dec 29, 2006

Serena, not all of us despise our internal editors. I adore mine and, although I work more slowly because of it, the satisfaction of polishing as you go can be quite compatible with getting the job done.

That being said, I'm ruined too. But for other reasons.

Don't despair. Rewrite it and love it all over again.

johnzakour · Dec 29, 2006

Nah, you aren't ruin, just growing. Take your newfound knowledge, let it sink in for a bit, then use this knowledge to improve your writing. We all have to go through growing pains inorder to become the writers we are meant to be.

(I'm lucky my internal editor is a monkey playing a bongo drum so he always leaves me alone.)

scarletpeaches · Dec 29, 2006

May I recommend this thread?

Carrie in PA · Dec 29, 2006

I thought Serena meant books she was reading?

PeeDee · Dec 29, 2006

It happens to everyone, I think. (It wouldn't have bothered me so much, but I find the phrase "as you know bob" hilarious, and it destroys the mood).

There are huge swaths of books I own which I enjoyed reading a great deal when I was younger, but will probably never read again. Books that i bought, and then a week later, couldn't get into. It's not that I've advanced "beyond" that, because that's pretty high-handed, it's just that my tastes have changed and reshaped themselves, just like my writing mind does, just like my thought process does.

If it means you can't read a good Star Wars novel anymore, but you're reading Gene Wolfe now, then it's fine.

scarletpeaches · Dec 29, 2006

Carrie in PA said:
I thought Serena meant books she was reading?

Bollocks, you're right. Oh well, got a plug in for my thread.

And yes, "As you know..." crops up a lot in BTB novels; she's the main criminal as far as I can see.

Carrie in PA · Dec 29, 2006

scarletpeaches said:
Bollocks, you're right. Oh well, got a plug in for my thread.

Bonus point for using "bollocks"! :ROFL:

I can't read anything anymore without analyzing it. It gets annoying when I want to just turn my brain off.

Perks · Dec 29, 2006

Carrie in PA said:
I thought Serena meant books she was reading?

Lol! You're right! Nevermind.

Serena - get a better book.

Serena Casey · Dec 29, 2006

Sorry - I did mean reading, not writing.

Only a few more pages in, and I've given up on the book. I hardly ever do that. Too much info dumping, redundancy, cliches, and stilted dialogue.

I'm sure recognizing this stuff will make me a better writer, but as Carrie said, it's hard to turn the brain off and just escape for a while.

PeeDee · Dec 29, 2006

Out of curiosity, what book was it...?

Chumplet · Dec 29, 2006

The same thing happened to me. I grabbed a hardcover off the bargain rack because I had enjoyed the author in my youth. I started to squirm a couple of chapters in because it was all backstory and no dialogue. She was born, she got married, yadda yadda yadda.... I wanted to scream with frustration. When she finally got to the meat and potatoes, they were so dry and flavourless I thought the characters were made of wood.

I plugged my way through to the end and concluded that this bestseller author is going to go glug, glug down the drain if she keeps up with this schlock.

Serena Casey · Dec 29, 2006

Well, out of embarrassment over my reading choices, let's just say it's a historical romance, although it's not BTB.

PeeDee · Dec 29, 2006

Serena Casey said:
Well, out of embarrassment over my reading choices, let's just say it's a historical romance, although it's not BTB.

Fair enough.

I have a whole shelf of Star Trek and Star Wars novels, some of them that I can still read and enjoy happily, some of them.......ooch.

For example, I revisit A.C. Crispins's Han Solo Trilogy every now and then. It still breaks my heart, in the end.

scarletpeaches · Dec 29, 2006

Is it wrong to read all of BTB's books to remind myself, if shit can get published, so can I?!

I used to enjoy her, think she was marvellous...I was in my early teens though and didn't get out much.

johnzakour · Dec 29, 2006

Serena Casey said:
Sorry - I did mean reading, not writing.

Only a few more pages in, and I've given up on the book. I hardly ever do that. Too much info dumping, redundancy, cliches, and stilted dialogue.

I'm sure recognizing this stuff will make me a better writer, but as Carrie said, it's hard to turn the brain off and just escape for a while.

Oops, my bad too. My brain has been making too many assumptions lately. I hope it's just the holidays. (I'm glad it wasn't one of my books that set you off!)

Jz

Carmy · Dec 29, 2006

I cringe at some of the things I read. The worst thing for me is that I can't enjoy reading mysteries any more. I know who did it within the first few chapters because I catch the plants and recognize the red herrings.

IrishScribbler · Dec 29, 2006

I find my inner editor tsk-ing as I read occasionally, but more often, the inner grammarian goes into convulsions reading, well, almost anything on the Internet.

Birol · Dec 29, 2006

Congratulations. You're a writer. Enjoy the hunt for better reading material.

limitedtimeauthor · Dec 29, 2006

I was starting to feel this way...and then got a whole lot more charitable when I realized if I ever get a book written, published, etc., someone is going to read it.

Yikes!

So I turn a blind (or at least myopic) eye to anything but the most blatant "mistakes," figuring, I guess, that what goes around comes around.

Oh, and I have another reason to quit being so critical. It's that voice I hear saying, "At least she wrote a whole book." It's that whole mote/beam thing.

ltd.

D.Hall · Dec 29, 2006

Serena Casey said:
Now that I have been visiting AW for several months, I can no longer read in peace without my newfound internal editor interrupting! The book I just started has a serious case of As You Know Bob and I can hardly stand it. I might have noticed it before if it was very blatant, but now that I've been trained to recognize all these writers' foibles, I can't help but notice them. I'm ruined forever.

You too, huh?

Andre_Laurent · Dec 29, 2006

Yeah, me too. I see every damn mistake.

Yet I read mine over and over and can't see some of them. :rant:

aruna · Dec 29, 2006

I devide my life into "before AW" (BAW) and "after AW" (AAW).

The trouble is, I wrote novels BAW and I don't dare read them again, for fear of what may be in them - I wrote them in the Dark Ages! I'm sure they are full of crap. (and no, I ma not fishing for compliments. I really am scared of rereading any of them.)

Anthony Ravenscroft · Dec 29, 2006

Serena Casey said:
I can no longer read in peace without my newfound internal editor interrupting!

So, welcome to Hell! Us OCD types have been holding space for some time.

It'll pass.

Well... no, that'd be a lie. It'll settle down. I can usually open a new commercial hardcover & find a howler within ten seconds.

That's tolerable. When you pick up a third edition from one of the biggest publishers on Earth & there's a blatant error every fifth page, then it's time to see what's on TV.

And you'll find that you can usually gloss over these errors, even if you get hyperpicky from time to time.

PeeDee · Dec 30, 2006

Mostly, I let grammatical errors and typesetting problems lie. Terry Pratchett's books have a chronic problem with leaving off the closing quotation marks on bits of dialogue. Mostly, I don't care.

What my internal editor does, and what I do care about, is a bad story, badly written. Or even a good story, badly written. I have some novels on my shelf that I loved the sound of, but when I sat down with them, the storytelling itself was so terrible (or even so "eh") that I gave up and went away.

I'm ruined

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