‘Stop the Lousy Writing, Please!’ (2015)

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If there’s one thing that’s hard to bear, it’s reading page after page of forced sarcasm and dopey slang in a fantasy novel. Not that it would be all that great in any other kind of novel; but fantasy seems especially prone to it.

Stop the Lousy Writing, Please!

Much of this can be blamed on dim-witted adults who think they’re cleverly writing down to teenagers. By “teenager” they mean someone with the intelligence of a radiator hose. They’ve been watching too much television and way too many movies.

It’s hard to beat plain English as a means of communication.

I wish some of these writers would try it sometime.

 

‘How to Write Good’ (2015)

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Sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying. Especially if you review Young Adults books.

How to Write Good

I wonder how hard editors have to work to get some of this stuff in shape to be published. I asked my editor, once (she’s now the editorial director for a major New York publishing house) how, when she was so hard on me, and so demanding of excellence, she could have let a certain book slip into print. She answered, “You didn’t see it the way it was when we got it. I won’t even try to describe what was wrong with it.”