Not So Easy...

While I'm on the subject of the writing process...

I'm reading a book right now that is okay bordering on good, but has a great idea in there. It needed a lot of attention from a devoted editor to coax out the great. It's part of why I don't have the dream of mainstream publishing anymore. I don't have the patience or thick skin to have that "this is alright, but how about if you make it better?" conversation with a writing group to workshop the piece before I could even present it to an editor. And because I don't already have a famous name and a following who would buy a just alright book I'm not really going to get the chance to publish something mediocre.

What I'm saying is writing is hard. Dialog is hard.

If you want an example just read the drek that our current president wrote in his birthday message to his best pedofile friend. It's terrible. I mean not just the "holy fuck that's creepy" implications of what he's writing but just the "who the fuck talks like this?" terribleness of the dialog. Brent thinks it's hilarious that I am just as pissed about his terrible writing as I am about what he said. Which isn't exactly true. I'm much madder about him being a serial sexual criminal but I am personally insulted by him thinking that was good enough dialog to print and sign.

I'm a decent writer. I'm not great. I'm too lazy to be great. And I also have a horrible feeling that I am best at writing cozy fiction (See: The Witches in the Wonky Tower, The Not Bright Knight, I Believe, Food For The Soul and their multiple parts) when I really want to be great at off kilter reality fiction (See Strings and almost everything else I've written). Of course the most read piece I've ever done (STILL!!!) is the one time I wrote some light erotica to show that I could do it but it was har...difficult... to do without sounding ridiculous (Summer Jobs)

Then there are the stories that end up important for other reasons. There are times when I'm doing something that I will think in my head "Fucking Jill, man" in Aaron's voice. (Write This Down) I also think about revisiting Jill and seeing how she's dealing with what she has to think is partly her fault. (I mean, if she were a real person and not just someone in my head)

Basically I enjoy writing fiction. It's fun. And I am decent sometimes, and terrible sometimes, but I'm good enough to know when something could be better and good enough to roll my fucking eyes at stilted dialog. Who talks like that? Besides our current president to his best pedofile friend.