• ✍️ WORDS ✍️

    Welcome Guest!

  • Words Moderators: Mysterier

trying to write a novel...

dhcdavid said:
Well for a start I'd tone down the drug rhetoric and awful demeaning of women by your protagonist.

And think whether your drug & drink soaked first chapters will really appeal to many folk....
Click to expand...

yeah, less drugs in a story about addiction. brilliant. why didn't i think of that.
it's a story of addiction spiraling into apocalyptic violence. should i maybe include some vampires, they seem to be hot shit these days, and have you been in any kind of bookstore lately? every worthlesss fucking dribble of cum gets published because people are gigantic idiots and buy the stupidest shit. this is not me saying i'll get published, but there are no fucking standards. maybe your novel has to have a certain quality if you want to be published, by, say random house. but everything has the potential to get published. as long as it contains words (pictures are okay too) a beginning and an end books wil be published. 95% of books published today in any language are utter fucking crap. it's all about self-aggrandizement, PR and and if there's a market for whatever theme the author chose. if you think quality has any part in it, i double double dare you to read the aforementioned twelve, or maybe hey, twilight. quality my fucking arse.
i took your criticism with all the all the civility i could muster, even PMd you. it takes a lot of guts to put something so personal out as it deals with a lot of fictionalized traumata i actually experienced. i mean okay you call it an unpublishable rant written by a chronic amphetamine abuser, but just because you perceive it so it sure as shit isn't so, and instead of pointing out the actual faults (the dialogue between janine and my main character, inconsinsies in time etc.) you call the whole thing a meth rant, and while i freely amidt the faults and errors its a first draft (you are familiar with the concept?), and the drifting of thouht and is a natural stylistic element of writing from one character's POV and those work differremt than novels writtten in the third person.
 
Last edited:
Oh whatever. Sure I've read "White Jazz" and the stacatto style and I also know that "White Jazz" didn't really take in any meaningful way if compared to the astonishing quality and success (the two concepts are linked believe it or not) of "The Cold Six Thousand" and "Blood's A Rover"......so where you get that it's maybe the greatest crime novel ever written I have no idea.

I also know that Ellroy had to shorten it by about two thirds in order to get it published so please get off your arrogant high-horse concerning publishers who'll publish anything. They publish what they believe will sell. And I, in the spirit of good nature, merely wanted you to objectively look again at your work and see if anything could be changed/ shortened etc which you took very personally, to my dismay.

Furthermore Ellroy's subsequently developed hard-boiled" style - which has really peaked in "Blood's A Rover" - is most certainly not easily emulated and I was merely trying to point out that whilst I love Ellroy your writing is, in my most humble opinion, nowhere near of a comparable quality....yet.

And it's all very well saying you're wanting to write a true novel about addiction but if that book is unreadable to the average reader then what is the point of having wasted all that time?

I was never trying to attack you personally and I do admire the guts required to pour your soul out so publicly. What do I know?

Take no criticism, correct nothing and submit it to every publisher you can find. I'm sure it'll do well.
 
Last edited:
hey man, no problem. i was just really strung out yesterday, hadn't slept in days... and ah, fuck it.
anyway, white jazz may not be ellroy's best book (the underworld u.s.a. trilogy is certainly much grander in scope and ambition) but it was a beautiful, impeccably plotted wrap up to the arc he started with the big nowhere and it just connected with me a bit more than the rest of his works. and that's saying something, because i certainly absolutely loved everything he did since the big nowhere. but white jazz is the crime novel i measure all other crime novels against. i know white jazz is linked via howard hughes and pete bondurant to american tabloid (which i've read at least three times). i think it was the first person narrative, dave klein was such a wonderfully fucked up protagonist, and what he did with the armenians and dudley smith in the end.
also, i think the l.a. trilogy was every bit as good in its own right as the u.s.a. underworld trilogy. ellroy wanted to achieve completely different things with each and grandly succeeded in both.
 
Sacrilege!!!!

NOTHING is as good as the Underworld Trilogy. Take that back at once!
 
yeah, especially the cold six thousand doesn't get enough love. seriously fucking great book.
 
also i probably should state that i'm not writing this because i want to become a published writer. if that would happen it would be nice, but i'm writing this for myself, to give voice to a lot of what makes my life the sad clusterfuck that it is. also i am constantly frustrated by my own limitations, and will often not write for weeks or months because i wanted to express something very specific in a certain stylistic fashion and find myself unable to do so. so i abandon this hobby of mine and read and read and read until i've forgotten whatever it exactly was i was so frustrated about.
 
I just started a novel myself, oddly enough in horrible benzo withdrawal and 5 quick drinks I just started pounding out ideas and parameters.

Took damn near 27 years to gain the courage to do that. Now its like just one of my things. I've always wanted to be a writer, particularly of fiction but journalism if I need to make a living and get by. Starting college in the fall, but I've learned from all the greats: Melville, Thompson, Kesey, Etc...

I'm using quite a bit of sci-fiction but not outlandishly so, it's a dystopic novel but we live in a dystopic world. Now I've just been coming up with plot and character outlines.

Evil characters are FUN to outline. Serious fun.

I'll read through in the morning I just got off work pretty shot. I also posted my Novel Outline (I've been busy with the short story for the workshop) in the workshop thread but may make my own thread or just finish a few chapters and use one in the workshop. I don't know how that could work though.

I do agree you have definite literary talent, I dug your first submission for sure.
 
You know how Hunter sat and typed out his favorite authors works, just to get the feel for what it must be like to write like that?

I type Hunters works, word for word, to get a feeling for what i must be like to write like that.

Maybe I'll get a novel of my own. Right now I'm under the good Doctor's tutelage.
 
He did it with Fitzgerald.

I just listen to audiobooks over and over, works better. :)
 
I haven't read even the majority of it yet, but from what I have read you have a lot of talent for writing! I definitely plan to read the rest when I get a chance :)

I'm also trying to write a novel at the moment. I've started about 4 in the last 7 years but have never come close to finishing one, so I'm trying really hard to keep myself on track this time and not completely lose track of what I was wanting to do after a month or two, lol. Best of luck and keep writing!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top