AWOL blogger and critical missteps
Has it really been a week since I posted?
Damn. I'm a bad blogger.
Guess I've just been bereft of my usual rich tapestry of terrifyingly deep thoughts the past week or so. Besides being pretty busy at work. And chipping away at another book (writing one, not reading one, though, I guess, technically, I'm chipping away at reading a few too, as is usual).
Other news: like the idiot I am, I joined a critical circle (which will not be named, for reasons that will shortly become obvious)--one of those groups in which you critique other folks' writing, and, eventually, earn the right to get some of your own looked at.
Bad idea, I'm now thinking. Fact is, a lot of the stuff you're called upon to look at is, well...
Okay. This makes me snooty, I know. But I think most of it's bad. Really bad. And the remainder which (in fairness) isn't so much bad just isn't particularly to my taste even when it does what it's trying to do adequately well.
It's bad enough, that it doesn't look like I'm going to be able to do this. I mean, most of this stuff, I don't even know where to start.
What was I thinking? I know this about myself. I've never got along particularly well with other writers and/or wannabe writers, except on the most casual and social of levels. Those annoying 'reading circles' and the like, I just don't do, and almost never have. Fact is, I just don't like most other people's writing much... And I've never been particularly good at hiding it. I was functional as an editor of other reporters only because it's a relatively constrained form of writing (versus, say fiction), and thus tends only to suck so badly. I mean, a bad reporter might insult your sense of grammar. A bad fiction writer can make you think: I just wasted two minutes of my quite finite life on this drooling silliness. I so don't care if your heroine dies of a hideous wasting disease. As she's fictional and a poorly sketched cliche, I actually rather hope she does... Dammit, man, you named her Petunia! Petunia!! What the hell is wrong with you!!?...
Ummm... where was I?
Oh yeah.
Anyway. Live and learn, I guess.
(Update: oh, okay. I'm gonna make myself try this for a week or two anyway... Mebbe I just picked up a few bad pages; there is a lotta stuff there; has to be a few I can handle without their inducing violent illness. Cross yer fingers for me.)
(Update the second: found something, after all. Not bad. Off we go.)
Damn. I'm a bad blogger.
Guess I've just been bereft of my usual rich tapestry of terrifyingly deep thoughts the past week or so. Besides being pretty busy at work. And chipping away at another book (writing one, not reading one, though, I guess, technically, I'm chipping away at reading a few too, as is usual).
Other news: like the idiot I am, I joined a critical circle (which will not be named, for reasons that will shortly become obvious)--one of those groups in which you critique other folks' writing, and, eventually, earn the right to get some of your own looked at.
Bad idea, I'm now thinking. Fact is, a lot of the stuff you're called upon to look at is, well...
Okay. This makes me snooty, I know. But I think most of it's bad. Really bad. And the remainder which (in fairness) isn't so much bad just isn't particularly to my taste even when it does what it's trying to do adequately well.
It's bad enough, that it doesn't look like I'm going to be able to do this. I mean, most of this stuff, I don't even know where to start.
What was I thinking? I know this about myself. I've never got along particularly well with other writers and/or wannabe writers, except on the most casual and social of levels. Those annoying 'reading circles' and the like, I just don't do, and almost never have. Fact is, I just don't like most other people's writing much... And I've never been particularly good at hiding it. I was functional as an editor of other reporters only because it's a relatively constrained form of writing (versus, say fiction), and thus tends only to suck so badly. I mean, a bad reporter might insult your sense of grammar. A bad fiction writer can make you think: I just wasted two minutes of my quite finite life on this drooling silliness. I so don't care if your heroine dies of a hideous wasting disease. As she's fictional and a poorly sketched cliche, I actually rather hope she does... Dammit, man, you named her Petunia! Petunia!! What the hell is wrong with you!!?...
Ummm... where was I?
Oh yeah.
Anyway. Live and learn, I guess.
(Update: oh, okay. I'm gonna make myself try this for a week or two anyway... Mebbe I just picked up a few bad pages; there is a lotta stuff there; has to be a few I can handle without their inducing violent illness. Cross yer fingers for me.)
(Update the second: found something, after all. Not bad. Off we go.)
posted by AJM at 9:54 a.m. (Permanent Link)
