darkemeralds (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
darkemeralds) wrote2020-04-08 09:38 am
darkemeralds) wrote2020-04-08 09:38 am
Fan mail
A few days ago I got fan mail from a (not-incidentally gay, male) friend:
I finished Restraint last night near two in the morning then fell asleep awash with emotions. Principal among them was a sense of satisfaction a reader feels when a story has not just worked but has transported them. Upon the conclusion of your wonderful novel, I arrived at a place quite distinct from where I departed. Please know that it wasn’t simply a pleasurable excursion but a transformative one.
The ride concluded, I also felt a palpable sense of longing yearning for more of John and Tristan’s story and hunger for more of your writing. When you have the pre-orders available for [your work in progress], I would like to be the first in line. Your prose is rich, exact, elegant and seemingly effortless though by now I know well that effortless is more often an effect than an accurate description of how it arrives so miraculously on the page. In fact, as the story took its final turn in Book Four, I purposely slowed my pace, savoring the experience washing over me, not unlike the sensation that John and Tristan each had in cherishing the limited time they had left together. Quite an achievement considering this reader had never partaken in the genre of romance queer, historical or otherwise.
I just wanted to share that. It's only a small portion of a long and thoughtful actual letter on paper.
I don't write for a broad, general audience (whatever that is). I'm aware that M/M stories are largely by and for women, and I'm fine with that. But I'm also aware of certain appropriation or fetishization problems with the genre, so it meant quite a lot to me to hear from a gay male friend that a) he'd trusted me enough to give my novel his time and attention, and b) he found it satisfying enough to write me a fan letter.
Maybe I'll keep writing.
I finished Restraint last night near two in the morning then fell asleep awash with emotions. Principal among them was a sense of satisfaction a reader feels when a story has not just worked but has transported them. Upon the conclusion of your wonderful novel, I arrived at a place quite distinct from where I departed. Please know that it wasn’t simply a pleasurable excursion but a transformative one.
The ride concluded, I also felt a palpable sense of longing yearning for more of John and Tristan’s story and hunger for more of your writing. When you have the pre-orders available for [your work in progress], I would like to be the first in line. Your prose is rich, exact, elegant and seemingly effortless though by now I know well that effortless is more often an effect than an accurate description of how it arrives so miraculously on the page. In fact, as the story took its final turn in Book Four, I purposely slowed my pace, savoring the experience washing over me, not unlike the sensation that John and Tristan each had in cherishing the limited time they had left together. Quite an achievement considering this reader had never partaken in the genre of romance queer, historical or otherwise.
I just wanted to share that. It's only a small portion of a long and thoughtful actual letter on paper.
I don't write for a broad, general audience (whatever that is). I'm aware that M/M stories are largely by and for women, and I'm fine with that. But I'm also aware of certain appropriation or fetishization problems with the genre, so it meant quite a lot to me to hear from a gay male friend that a) he'd trusted me enough to give my novel his time and attention, and b) he found it satisfying enough to write me a fan letter.
Maybe I'll keep writing.
no subject
As to editing, a lot depends on your working style. Generally I recommend that my clients dump words on the page, accumulating story materials (first draft). A trick here is "TK" (editor-speak for "to come," inserted where research or further thought would interrupt the creative flow).
Next, go back and shape the story, removing excess scenes, characters or plot lines, making non-working scenes work, etc. (This could comprise as many as three or four drafts in a long work.)
Not until the story is structured do I recommend line editing (read aloud, fix word choices, cadences, continuity problems, bad habits...).
Last of all, a copy-editing pass for typos and any remaining SPAG errors.
At every step except the initial draft, a second pair of eyes is useful. The trick is getting a reader/editor who doesn't waste time correcting SPAG when the story isn't even structured yet.
It was a huge shock to me to learn that "editing" wasn't first or even primarily fixing mistakes at the word or line level.