If I Were Dead, Would that Get Me Published?

First of all, I'm not dead. This is not some cousin sitting at my house and hacking into my computer right after my funeral (though that would make an interesting short story).

Nope. I'm still alive and kicking. And that makes my writing worth less than my mid-sleep drool. No, that's not true. I'm too used to writing fiction, it seems. I don't drool. Perhaps my writing is worth less than my toothpaste foam? I do actually brush my teeth. A lot. And I floss, too.

But I digress. I spent the last week or so reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and the first 100 boring pages left me wondering why an editor didn't tell the writer to cut half of the exposition at the beginning. Or all of it. Then I realized that the writer was dead. An editor couldn't exactly cut it out over the author's dead body, could he? Or could he?










I know the book is a bestseller. I don't mean to criticize, really. But I did wonder whether the book is not far more popular because its author is dead. In the same way that an artist's paintings suddenly cost twice as much when the artist is no longer around to paint any more of them. 

And I still wish the first part had been edited down a LOT. And I didn't find the prose in the least bit "steamy," as the back cover promised. I wish I'd liked the characters more. I wish the justified deaths of the bad guys had been more satisfying. I wish there had been more suspense. More than anything else, I wish the author were still alive so that he could revise a little, improve, and make his books utterly spectacular.

I guess that makes me grateful. My best draft of any of my books isn't very good, but I'm not dead. I have time still to work on them.

What have I learned from all this, besides the fact that I hate exposition?

1. I'm not dead. (Whew!)
2. I don't want to be dead.
3. My writing still needs work.
4. If I don't become a published author until after I'm dead, that will stink big time.
5. I need to get to work on my writing!!!!

Come to think of it, so do you! You won't live to be 300, so you might as well get to work on your big life's project right now. Go do it. Get off this page. Stop wasting time reading my drivel and create some of your own. And then revise it. Cut out the damn exposition. Make it better.

Geez, are you still here? Go! Really! Why are you still reading this!?

Amazon.com Breakthrough Novel Contest

If you haven't submitted your complete novel to the Amazon.com Breakthrough Novel Contest yet, you only have a few more days to do it. The submission period ends February 5, or once 5,000 entries have been received in a given category (there are two: Adult and YA).

I just uploaded mine and submitted, and I'm glad I did. Sure, I might not even make it to the next level, but every time I send my work out, it gets easier. I spent more than a week revising and re-revising my next-to-next-to-last chapter (the climax), trying to get it where it needed to be. I've revised this novel at least 25 times, but probably more that this, for its first version was completed in 2003, just six months after I graduated with my doctorate. I bought myself a used laptop as a graduation present, and it was the first novel I wrote on it.

Is it ready to publish? I have no idea. Countless people have read it--some have read more than one version--and I have to admit it might not be ready for another ten years (*gasp*), but I'll likely not give up on it.

Now it's your turn. Do you have a completed work? SEND IT IN!!!! Don't wait! Don't sit on your hands any longer. Don't doubt.

Okay, doubt if you wish. But send it in anyway. What do you have to lose?

Lament for NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo's coming soon
And millions will by typing
Their goal? A thousand words by noon
--no blogging and no Skyping!

They'll churn out words by leaps and bounds
Resist the urge to edit
Until they've won their writing crowns
And earned their "winner" credit

December first will end the rush
And make the agents cringe
For they fear the impending crush
Of horrid books formed in a rush
By writers on a binge.