(no subject)
Apr. 5th, 2006 04:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I think RWA is (generally speaking) a great organization. I think a lot of times it's extremely helpful. I think RWA has done much to help romance become a genre that's taken seriously. I think RWA refuses to be shunted aside by people who say, "Oh, it's just women." I think that is awesome.
However. The number one thing I see from RWA members that makes me cringe is this "Pro" thing. Really. Stop it. I don't care that you have a pro pin. It doesn't actually make you a professional at all. In fact, I sort of mentally groan and roll my eyes and think to myself, "Great, yet another person who has no idea what she's doing."
It's not your fault -- RWA encourages you to think this is important. That's fine. But here's a reality check: it doesn't matter. If you're sending me a proposal, I care about your words a lot, and your publishing history/contacts a little bit, and your RWA status not at all.
(If you don't know what I am talking about, here's a quick definition: RWA offers something called a "Pro pin" to its members who have finished and submitted a manuscript. Since 999 times out of 1,000 (999,999 times out of 1,000,000?) a first-time submission won't get published, you can prove that you are a "pro" by showing them your rejection letter. Seriously. I have run into more than one person who writes and submits a crappy ms. just for a pro pin, and more than one person who thinks that a pro pin means something to editors. It does not. Obviously.)
La la la. Moving on. Yesterday when I woke up, Vincent was dragging his back legs. In fact, I woke up because he was making weird noise. It was like he didn't have the use of his hips, but he wouldn't let me look at his legs. So I called my vet and left a message and called in sick to work. I kept calling my vet. To make a long story short, she couldn't see me, so I went with both cats to the ghetto vet near the Williamsburg Bridge. Vincent was fine -- by the time we got there, he was totally okay. But it turns out that Shiksa's got conjunctivitis!
I felt kind of hysterical and ridiculous -- yet at the same time absolutely vindicated because something was wrong.
Then I went to the office, because I am a compulsive workaholic, and, before going out for supper with some of my friends, I stopped in at a B&N near my office. I was kind of appalled to see that romance only had two bookshelves, whereas mystery had five, but whatever. I picked up six or seven books, and read one of them while drinking a mocha -- The Admiral's Bride by Suzanne Brockmann. She's one of my favorite writers, and this is a reprint (originally published in 1999), and I loved it. And when I was finished, I realized that I shouldn't have done that. I should have saved her for last.
Because the other five books or however many I had? Were crap. I flipped through them on the train on my way home. The most egregious errors were ones the copyeditor really should have caught (like the heroine who first graduated in 1996 and then in 1998, and either way, there was no way that she was a successful sociology professor!). I hated so many of the characters. There were a lot of clumsy beginnings -- dossiers instead of character development, etc. Totally boring stuff that actually kind of upset me. Why so lazy, writers?
Not to even mention that 99% of the time, when there's a dossier to introduce characters, they're always accurate. I hate that. I think it would be much more interesting to do something like what
cesperanza did in her story MVP and have the dossier actually be inaccurate (or not entirely accurate, anyway). Come on, shake things up.
Jeez.
I don't mean to sound so vehement, but.... blah. I had high hopes. I always do. I just hate everything! I can see why other people would enjoy some of it (sometimes I can, anyway), but I just... Hm. Like my userinfo used to say, I am interested exclusively in things that are interesting.
Things I have tried and failed at in the last few days: to set up a "real" blog using movable type (that shit is hard!), Trackbacks, PB Wiki (
scratchyfishie and
2muchexposition both have one, but I can't figure out what to use it for!), the Xvid codec, the DivX codec, and to teach myself to compress video files without losing too much quality.
I have, however, suceeded at eating a lot of burritos, listening to a lot of Kane, watching a lot of Supernatural and Criminal Minds and Grey's Anatomy and The Evidence, and planning out what I am going to do with my life, which includes opening a roadside truckstop diner with my friends where we will serve pie.
In conclusion, Christian Kane is hot. There's not much more I can say about that.
However. The number one thing I see from RWA members that makes me cringe is this "Pro" thing. Really. Stop it. I don't care that you have a pro pin. It doesn't actually make you a professional at all. In fact, I sort of mentally groan and roll my eyes and think to myself, "Great, yet another person who has no idea what she's doing."
It's not your fault -- RWA encourages you to think this is important. That's fine. But here's a reality check: it doesn't matter. If you're sending me a proposal, I care about your words a lot, and your publishing history/contacts a little bit, and your RWA status not at all.
(If you don't know what I am talking about, here's a quick definition: RWA offers something called a "Pro pin" to its members who have finished and submitted a manuscript. Since 999 times out of 1,000 (999,999 times out of 1,000,000?) a first-time submission won't get published, you can prove that you are a "pro" by showing them your rejection letter. Seriously. I have run into more than one person who writes and submits a crappy ms. just for a pro pin, and more than one person who thinks that a pro pin means something to editors. It does not. Obviously.)
La la la. Moving on. Yesterday when I woke up, Vincent was dragging his back legs. In fact, I woke up because he was making weird noise. It was like he didn't have the use of his hips, but he wouldn't let me look at his legs. So I called my vet and left a message and called in sick to work. I kept calling my vet. To make a long story short, she couldn't see me, so I went with both cats to the ghetto vet near the Williamsburg Bridge. Vincent was fine -- by the time we got there, he was totally okay. But it turns out that Shiksa's got conjunctivitis!
I felt kind of hysterical and ridiculous -- yet at the same time absolutely vindicated because something was wrong.
Then I went to the office, because I am a compulsive workaholic, and, before going out for supper with some of my friends, I stopped in at a B&N near my office. I was kind of appalled to see that romance only had two bookshelves, whereas mystery had five, but whatever. I picked up six or seven books, and read one of them while drinking a mocha -- The Admiral's Bride by Suzanne Brockmann. She's one of my favorite writers, and this is a reprint (originally published in 1999), and I loved it. And when I was finished, I realized that I shouldn't have done that. I should have saved her for last.
Because the other five books or however many I had? Were crap. I flipped through them on the train on my way home. The most egregious errors were ones the copyeditor really should have caught (like the heroine who first graduated in 1996 and then in 1998, and either way, there was no way that she was a successful sociology professor!). I hated so many of the characters. There were a lot of clumsy beginnings -- dossiers instead of character development, etc. Totally boring stuff that actually kind of upset me. Why so lazy, writers?
Not to even mention that 99% of the time, when there's a dossier to introduce characters, they're always accurate. I hate that. I think it would be much more interesting to do something like what
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
Jeez.
I don't mean to sound so vehement, but.... blah. I had high hopes. I always do. I just hate everything! I can see why other people would enjoy some of it (sometimes I can, anyway), but I just... Hm. Like my userinfo used to say, I am interested exclusively in things that are interesting.
Things I have tried and failed at in the last few days: to set up a "real" blog using movable type (that shit is hard!), Trackbacks, PB Wiki (
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
I have, however, suceeded at eating a lot of burritos, listening to a lot of Kane, watching a lot of Supernatural and Criminal Minds and Grey's Anatomy and The Evidence, and planning out what I am going to do with my life, which includes opening a roadside truckstop diner with my friends where we will serve pie.
In conclusion, Christian Kane is hot. There's not much more I can say about that.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-05 08:56 pm (UTC)Anyway, I am RWA-Pro, but it never would've occurred to me to mention that fact in a query letter, because all that really means is I finished a manuscript and had the guts to send it out--a fact I'm proving anyway by querying! I did mention my membership in my local chapter and in the Beau Monde (the Regency special interest chapter--I write in that era, though with more battlefields than ballrooms), but only in the next-to-last paragraph after talking about my book and where I thought it would fit in the market. And I must've done something right, or at least not too badly wrong, because I have an agent now!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-05 08:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-05 08:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-05 09:00 pm (UTC)(Or at least that's what Tigger thinks. LOL)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-05 09:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-05 09:01 pm (UTC)I don't have an email. Boo.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-05 09:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-05 09:03 pm (UTC)Well, I liked it. It took me a long time to get used to diaryland and livejournal and that stuff. I still don't really like MT and all that junk. And wikis! OMG! They really conuse me!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-05 09:07 pm (UTC)That's it? I was expecting a lot more, frankly, as in "professional published". Someone who's got a book coming out from Tor, sure. :) But I tried sending out my first novel when I was 12...handwritten on notebook paper on both sides of the page...and I don't exactly think that merits a pin...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-05 09:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-05 09:10 pm (UTC)MT and Wordpress are too complicated for me and I'm apparently an old fuddy duddy inside and hate to deal with new fangled stuff.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-05 09:11 pm (UTC)But then I tried watching the whole thing all the way through after it was on TNT and teh first season is hideously awful.
Overall it's a great storyline, but JMS has really clunky dialogue that only the best actors can overcome (and not even them at times)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-05 09:14 pm (UTC)The cool thing about the biker gang guy is the irony of the fact that he's pretty much the one actor in the cast who has the upbringing of most of the characters (very rich kid in Los Angeles with a Hollywood family - or in his case, he's the great grandson of Frank Capra) but he's definitely the best character in the bunch.
Although Logan is a great character too - mostly over the course of an entire season where he's so contradictory.
But I suppose if Veronica annoys you, there's really no convincing you to give it another chance. Oh well. It's just a television show. Just a television show.
Oh and if you don't post before next week, have a great Pesach.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-05 09:17 pm (UTC)I suppose if Veronica annoys you, there's really no convincing you to give it another chance.
I've given it waaaaay more than one chance. Are you kidding? I actually got a bunch of my friends to start watching it back in the first season -- episodes one and two were interesting. But by episode three, forget it. I kept coming back, and kept thinking, "This crap is too clever for its own good."
Finally I just gave up. I mean.... why bother, when there's so many other tv shows I can watch, you know?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-05 09:23 pm (UTC)As for "Pro" status, I understand why RWA started it up -- there was such an outcry about "not enough being" done for the unpubbed that this really seemed the only way to calm the masses. While I'm going to apply once I qualify again (since my last rejection was a couple of years ago before I burned out and just wrote fic for a while) because I'd like access to the "boot camp" workshops they do on the PRO list, it's not something I'd put in a query letter. In fact, when I queried for a historical romance, my RWA membership was mentioned only in passing because I included that I'd done presentations on historical costuming at a couple of Nationals. Given how long ago that was now, I probably wouldn't even include that.
I've heard people in my chapter say one should just go ahead and submit any old thing to get the rejection so one can get the Pro Pin, but the idea of submitting something that I don't feel is ready is anathema to me. Waste of my time, waste of the editor's time.
I tried Moveable Type for my writing blog -- didn't like it and ended up with WordPress. Problem is, you end up spending a fair amount of time figuring out how to use SQL and manipulate CSS stylesheets.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-05 09:25 pm (UTC)But I've learned a lot about HTML that way, and when I got a blog, I just picked the first template and rewrote the entire thing to make it look the way I want. Something you can't do with LJ. I've also applied for a Europa Domain and when that one works, I'll design a really cool website. :)
I think both LJ and blogs have their advantages, and that's why I have both.
One of the problems is that critique groups and how-to books and so forth are teaching a One True Way to write. It's making everything too much the same.
Some suggestions are useful, but I've learned to trust my instincts rather than the books, and I break a lot of "rules".
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-05 09:26 pm (UTC)I've spent the last year in a state of paranoia about whether it is better to state the credits up front, or to *not* state them up front and have them found by Googling. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-05 09:27 pm (UTC)I am definitely keeping a close eye on him. It seemed silly to think it then, but a little research on the internet (hah) makes me wonder if it's not neurological.
And as for RWA... there's always an outcry. First it's the unpubbeds, and then it's PAN, and... etc. People always think that not enough is being done for them.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-05 09:28 pm (UTC)*g*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-05 09:37 pm (UTC)And when trying to explain to someone with her first contract why she should *read* the contract before signing it, and think about whether as a reader she would buy books from that publisher, how do I say "Yes, some are crappy" without sounding like a print snob?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-05 09:41 pm (UTC)And even the good print/e houses have their problems. I will be the first to say that Tor ha spublished some stinkers!! It's a tough line to draw. But you know what? I can almost always tell when someone's been e-published from the text, and I can't do that with print publishing. (And how do you write in a rejection letter, "Seriously, take this to epublisher X and you'll be very successful there" without sounding HIDEOUS?)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-05 09:48 pm (UTC)Anyway, it sounds like you have it under control. Hopefully it's nothing serious!
P.S. Enjoyed Touch of Evil, loved The Challenge and am really digging The Dare! =)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-05 09:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-05 10:01 pm (UTC)I have bigger issues with the notion of all the unpublished writers being referred to as "pre-published." You're either published, or you're not. Semantics, perhaps, but it's one of the things that's always chafed my knickers a bit.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-05 10:04 pm (UTC)