Agents representing hysterical realism

richcapo said:

Please read my posts more carefully. You are reading them incorrectly and putting words into my mouth.

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Richard:

1. You are using a term you do not understand; if you look at the initial context in which James Wood created the phrase, it was not complimentary. You are essentially telling anyone who is conversant with pomo lit that your books is pretentious.

2. Comparing your book to works by people like Pynchon is, at the very least, pretentious, and it verges on hubris.

3. If your queries are as contentious and non-communicative as your posts here, you might consider that you are not presenting your book or yourself in the best light. If you are being perpetually mis-read, look to your prose rather than to your readers.

4. For a new, unknown writer to assert that he is a member of a particular literary school (speaking as someone who has taught pomo lit and critical theory at the college level) is not going to make a good impression. You're certainly not making a good impression on the members here.

5. Query the book. Neither you nor your editor will the person who decides the book's genre. Query readers aren't going to care what literary genre you think it is, or what school. They want to know what the book is about.

For the spectators, I would like to try to take one more stab at explaining the reaction you're getting on this thread, but with an important initial point: it's absolutely fine if you don't want to post your material here. No one is pressuring you to betray your comfort zone.

The concern is for other new writers who may read this thread. The advice you've been given about the dangers of idea-poaching and query-thieving as it pertains to novels is not something that any of us have heard from industry professionals. In fact, we often hear quite the opposite, and that this expressed fear is a hallmark of someone who hasn't yet familiarized himself with the business. My agent is very pleased that I workshop my writing before dragging her into my mess. (And she's one of the very best in the business.)

We also have many, many successful published writers here at AW who cite the critique, feedback, and support of AW's Share Your Work/Query Hell boards as pivotal to their success. We're a pay-it-forward bunch and we wouldn't want other people to feel inhibited to seek peer counsel here at AW because they read in a thread that an unnamed professional somebody warned them not to.

Does that make sense?

Dude.

You are totally misreading my posts.

I get it. I really do. You aren't judging anyone on this forum and you respect the people here, and what you said about people who post on forums was you quoting other people and not at all your opinion.

I get it.

I read very well.

YOU are the one not understanding what you are reading, at least by me.

So I will try to explain. Again.


While you trust us all here just fine, you nonetheless don't want to post your work here. As you say, that has nothing to do with us, but with lurkers who might be less reputable than members. Awesome. Cool. That's your reasoning (as flawed as many of us think it is), but it has nothing to do with your attitude towards us which is altogether respectful.

I wasn't saying otherwise. I was offering you a slightly more complex argument. But the argument is pointless as it was founded on my thinking that you had decided not to post work on a public forum due to the advice you'd been given by those mysterious other authors/publishers. I had initially thought that the reason you weren't posting your query here was because you thought the advice that they had given you was sound.

Thus. Following up on that train of thought (which I know now isn't true) . . . I was demonstrating how ANOTHER piece of advice, totally unrelated to the posting of work onto forums, but about the nature of forums themselves, was utterly wrong. And that therefore if one piece of advice was wrong, then maybe it would behoove you to question that other piece of advice (namely not posting on public forums).

To put it another way:

Say I ask someone how much I owe them for a tip after a meal. They tell me 12$. I say, "Awesome." Then later I learn that this person insists that 2 + 2 =7. No matter what you tell them they insist that that equation is correct. Well that is going to make me take pause as to whether or not the tip they earlier calculated is in fact accurate. If this person can make a false conclusion in one mathematical equation, surely it's very possible they could make one with another.

So, to take it back to your mysterious authors/publishers advice people. They were utterly and completely wrong with regards to the nature of the kinds of people who post on writing forums. Therefore it is possible to conclude that maybe they were also wrong about how work might be stolen off of writing forums. Now it isn't a for sure conclusion, one doesn't necessarily equal the other. But it's possible.

HOWEVER.

None. Of. This. Matters.

As your decision not to post on a writing forum was NOT based on their advice. But on your own conclusion determined separately from their advice.

But I hope you now understand what I'm trying to say. I'm not saying that their argument is fallacious because the people here are professional and would never steal. I am saying their argument MIGHT be fallacious because one of their other arguments was fallacious. What I mean is, they've already proven their ignorance in one category, therefore it is reasonable to assume they might also be ignorant in another similar category.

That's all.

If you don't quite understand my meaning after this post, I can try to explain again, but I'd ask you not to continue to put down my reading comprehension as it isn't actually me who has the problem understanding. I get it. You don't want to post your work here because you worry about non-member lurkers stealing it. It has nothing to do with awesome amazingness of the people here. I get it. I've got it since we started this conversation.

You're the one not quite getting MY meaning. But I will spare you from going back and quoting myself over and over to make my point which I hope was totally clear this time.

This thread has turned into quite the roundelay. Fascinating! Toothpaste, I suspect you are wasting your breath.