Schadenfreude, Perhaps, Yet Still A”Good”Read

Yzabel / January 4, 2006

Being a French person trying to write in English as well as in her mother tongue isn’t easy; to the usual doubts of the author regarding her ability to write well, are added the doubts about the other language, the one she doesn’t speak from the start. I don’t always have a clear appreciation of what good and bad writing in English is, and being given examples is an interesting way for me to learn and see what is being done (and what I shouldn’t do).

Along these lines, comes Miss Snark, who kindly provided her readers with a list of excerpts from stories submitted to Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. Submitted, not published–yet this is already enlightening enough as it is.

Truth be told, those of you who’ve had a peek at the excerpts I’ve posted on my NaNo blog (yes, the unedited ones, these parts of a first draft that I wrote as if there was no tomorrow, drugged on coffee and gobbling down handfuls of frozen raspberries): am I right in thinking that I can’t do worse than that?

In all honesty, my self-confidence has been given a serious boost today–as well as a renewed desire to go on writing until I fall dead.

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Comments

  • Deborah

    I laughed out loud at many of these excerpt. Below is my one of my favorites.”Ejaculations aside, that’s one hell of a package to swallow!”You’ve made my day, Yzabel. My self-confidence is boosted as well. So I will go write until my fingers ache.

  • Yzabel

    This one was really strong, indeed. I’m not sure if the story it’s in was supposed to be funny or ot, but if it wasn’t, it’s ruined by this :p

  • pat kirby

    I belonged to Critters Online Critique Workshop for a couple of years. It was a great experience…but as time went by, I was sometimes amazed by how bizarre/weird/…er, just outright bad some stories could be. (There are also a lot of great writers were participate.)I mean, some were so awful that there really wasn’t any redemption for them. And some of these folks never seem to improve. Every story they’d submit had the same mistakes and other “weirdness.”No doubt, some sent these stories out into the land of Submission. Poor editors.

  • fredcq

    Okay…this is my favorite:”Bastard! I shall severe your soul.”I edited my own Ezine for while and know the pain of being an editor, lol.

  • Cavan

    Those were pretty horrible, alright. I’ll further fredcq’s comment – editing my anthology right now, I’ve noticed that the bulk of stuff I get is nowhere near publishable.So, when they say that only a small percentage of things get published, I take it with a grain of salt. That has more to do with the fact that most people submitting manuscripts couldn’t string together a decent sentence to save their lives.

  • Yzabel

    Fredcq–This one ranks high on my laugh-o-meter, too. I don’t know if it’s the wording, the typo, the weird image it raises, or all of these.

  • Yzabel

    Cavan–I haven’t edited a zine or my own anthology, but simply taking short stories I wrote in English 3-4 years ago and reading them was enough to show me that editing must be a daunting task… Oh, the horror. My current ‘me’ can’t believe that my ‘me’ at that time could write in such a crappy way!Indeed, if the majority of unpublished things is akin to these, maybe we don’t need to worry * that * much?

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