SPLITTING MYSELF IN TWO

Helix · Jan 1, 2018

Seconding mccardey.

The best defence to an accusation of verbosity is writing more clearly and with fewer verbal curlicues.

Old Hack · Jan 2, 2018

David, you said all that, but you didn't tell us the total word-count of your essay collection. Could you oblige?

AW Admin · Jan 2, 2018

DeviatedDavid said:
First, I just took my sleeping pills so this might not sound as clear as it should

Don't post when you're not ready to be taken seriously.

DeviatedDavid said:
I wrote about this English anxiety in this segment of a memoir like piece about childhooed:

It was the girlish discipline and the least Jewish of disciplines -- how could a language whose first major book was the "King James Bible," a title and a name which reeks of Christianity, reeks of it like glazed ham and mashed potatoes with Iced Tea, ever welcome a people so far from the Island Kingdom -- and it refused to let this Jewish boy enter its special world.

This is both sexist, and inaccurate. The King James Bible is absolutely not the first major book in English. That's a matter of opinion, but it's likely to be Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, or Caxton's Malory.

DeviatedDavid said:
David Gottfried, Copywright, 1992

1. It's copyright.
2. You don't need to assert copyright for everything you write; you have it the moment you start to create.
3. Attaching your copyright to works you submit to agents or editors, or putting it on your post, is potentially offensive and definitely makes you look amateur. Especially when you haven't even followed the standard copyright notification format.

gtanders · Jan 2, 2018

AW Admin said:
The King James Bible is absolutely not the first major book in English. That's a matter of opinion, but it's likely to be Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, or Caxton's Malory.

To muddy the waters further... the Exeter Book and other codices date from the 10th century. They don't look like English, and you may need to take a college course to read them, but the writers called themselves "Englisc."

Sorry, off topic, but Old English is awesome and y'all should study it.

mccardey · Jan 2, 2018

gtanders said:
To muddy the waters further... the Exeter Book and other codices date from the 10th century. They don't look like English, and you may need to take a college course to read them, but the writers called themselves "Englisc."

Sorry, off topic, but Old English is awesome and y'all should study it.

I do love AW. :Hug2:

Helix · Jan 2, 2018

I love the good stuff that pops up in threads.

Is the KJV even the first version of the Bible to appear in English?

Also iced tea...?

Albedo · Jan 2, 2018

Didn't Jesus write the KJV?

mccardey · Jan 2, 2018

Albedo said:
Didn't Jesus write the KJV?

Mostly my all-time crush, William Tyndale. Though Medi keeps prodding me look further afield.

Albedo · Jan 2, 2018

I don't think even the Tyndale bible was the first. It was just the first to be a commercial success.

mccardey · Jan 2, 2018

Albedo said:
I don't think even the Tyndale bible was the first. It was just the first to be a commercial success.

To be fair he was mostly translating. But he had such a way with words!

AW Admin · Jan 2, 2018

Helix said:
I love the good stuff that pops up in threads.

Is the KJV even the first version of the Bible to appear in English?

Also iced tea...?

No. The earliest extant version is in scribal glosses in the Book of Lindisfarne. There are bits of the Bible translated in Old English in various places, but this is the first large chunk.

Aldred, the Provost of Chester-le-Street, c. 970 added Old English glosses to the Latin text of the Gospels. If you look at text heavy pages, the small black interlinear text are Aldred's Old English translations of the Latin text.*

Wycliffe's Middle English translation is the first complete translation. c. 1380; in mss.
Tyndale's printed bible was c. 1525–31, in sections.
Coverdale's 1535 printing and translation was the first complete printed English bible.
The "official" English Great Bible was printed. c. 1539–41; it's huge, meant to used /read from the pulpit.
The Geneva Bible was c. 1557–60. This is one that people who study Renaissance English lit spend a lot of time on, in part because of the marginal glosses.
Douay-Rheims Catholic centric English translation c. 1609
1611 King James

*Yes, they were cheat notes.

Helix · Jan 2, 2018

Thank you for that link. It took me a few moments to drag my gaze from that magnificent and intricate art to the interlinear text.

AW Admin · Jan 2, 2018

gtanders said:
To muddy the waters further... the Exeter Book and other codices date from the 10th century. They don't look like English, and you may need to take a college course to read them, but the writers called themselves "Englisc."

Sorry, off topic, but Old English is awesome and y'all should study it.

Six weeks and you can read Beowulf. Four weeks and you can read most of the Exeter elegies.

AW Admin · Jan 2, 2018

Helix said:
Thank you for that link. It took me a few moments to drag my gaze from that magnificent and intricate art to the interlinear text.

It's one of my favorite early mss. People know about the book of Kells, but Lindisfarne is just as lovely. Plus it has a cat with birds inside of it.

Calla Lily · Jan 2, 2018

*drools over the Lindisfarne image*

I have an OUP edition of Wycliffe. I love the way it reads.

Barbara R. · Jan 3, 2018

As a former agent myself, I'm afraid you will have a hard time selling this work, not because of the disparate viewpoints, but because you're not a well-known pundit or writer. It's very hard to sell essays even if the writer is well-known and respected. If the writer's unknown, I doubt I'd have been able to get anyone even to read it. The sales potential just isn't there, and that's the bottom line for publishers.

The good news is that these days, writers have options. Try the agent route by all means if traditional publishing is what you're aiming for. But if you find no takers, you might consider self-publishing. At least your work will be out there with a chance to find readers.

Good luck!

Barbara

DeviatedDavid · Jan 4, 2018

Old Hack,

You asked me how many words we are talking about:

"Tell us how many words of work you have. If you only have 30,000 words you don't have enough to make a book. If you have more than 400,000 you have more than enough for several books, so can edit them down into nice, coherent collections."

The selection of essays I talked about comes to 116,476 words.

I have other flles on my computer which contain other essays. I have about 3000 files on my computer. I can't remember all the stuff I have written. I think it is safe to say that I have at least another 100,000 words of essays.

I also have a novel, which is either gonna make me seem as funny as Gene Wilder in "The Producers" or put me in a mental asylum.
It is 76,884 words.

I also have between 80 and 300 poems, depending upon the state of completion. About half of them rhyme.

Finally, I have from 5 to 15 memoir like pieces which reflect on odd times in my life. Of course, my life might not seem that fascinating to others, but I tie my life to larger social, political and sexual phenomena that most people find interesting.

I thank you for your input, insight and inquiry as to my word count, and I will try to follow your advice and try to offer good critiques of other works

Old Hack · Jan 4, 2018

DeviatedDavid said:
Old Hack,

You asked me how many words we are talking about:

"Tell us how many words of work you have. If you only have 30,000 words you don't have enough to make a book. If you have more than 400,000 you have more than enough for several books, so can edit them down into nice, coherent collections."

The selection of essays I talked about comes to 116,476 words.

I have other flles on my computer which contain other essays. I have about 3000 files on my computer. I can't remember all the stuff I have written. I think it is safe to say that I have at least another 100,000 words of essays.

I also have a novel, which is either gonna make me seem as funny as Gene Wilder in "The Producers" or put me in a mental asylum.
It is 76,884 words.

I also have between 80 and 300 poems, depending upon the state of completion. About half of them rhyme.

Finally, I have from 5 to 15 memoir like pieces which reflect on odd times in my life. Of course, my life might not seem that fascinating to others, but I tie my life to larger social, political and sexual phenomena that most people find interesting.

I thank you for your input, insight and inquiry as to my word count, and I will try to follow your advice and try to offer good critiques of other works

You have more than enough words for a book in your selection of essays.

However, having read an excerpt of your work I urge you to learn to self-edit. Your writing is far too convoluted and verbose to be publishable in its current form.

SPLITTING MYSELF IN TWO

Helix

socially distancing

Old Hack

Such a nasty woman

AW Admin

gtanders

mccardey

Helix

socially distancing

Albedo

Alex

mccardey

Albedo

Alex

mccardey

AW Admin

Helix

socially distancing

AW Admin

AW Admin

Calla Lily

On hiatus

Barbara R.

Old Hand in the Biz

DeviatedDavid

Old Hack

Such a nasty woman