Excell wrote:The point of a novel of any kind isn't how correct the grammar is or how flowery or plain the description is. The two main things that have to happen is it has to pull the reader in and it has to have some kind of meaning. These things posted up here have no deep seeded or even obvious meaning.
What the fuck? It's not finished yet. Who are you to say that it doesn't have any meaning? Jackass. As for sucking you in, I'm often asked "Have you written more of this?" after showing that little piece to people. There are quite a few people I know that regularly ask about the progress of it. Whether it pulled you in or not, I don't know. Maybe explain why you now what the fuck you're talking about, and I'll understand. If the plot were the only thing that mattered in a story, published writers wouldn't bother writing stuff like this:
"Our stage faced the west, and the setting sun had left the sky a welter of lurid color: purple-reds striped gold and flame and black. Against this violent ground, which might have been the massed banners of Hell, there began to appear, in ones and twos, like the elongate shadows of fantastic grenadiers crenelated and plumed, the heads, the slender necks, the narrow shoulders, of a platoon of my father's demimondaines; arriving late, they were taking the last seats at the upper rim of our theater, encircling it like the soldiery of some ancient, bizarre government surrounding a treasonous mob." --- Taken from Gene Wolfe's "The Fifth Head of Cerberus"
People appreciate a good story even more when an author can use vivid language and describe exactly what is going on. Look how much description he put into some people taking the last seats at a play.
Oh, I'm officially a published writer(Or soon to be, really.) Today, I got a letter in the mail from the Anthology of Poetry by Young Americans:
"Congratulations! A poem that Judah Spindler submitted to the Anthology or Poetry, Inc. has been accepted for publication. This poem has been selected as one of the most creative submissions and has earned a full page in the 2005 edition of the
Anthology of Poetry by Young Americans."
It goes on about the history of the publication, but I won't bore you with that.
The thing is, I submitted two poems to this publication, and they didn't tell me which one got submitted. I'll just post both of them here.
I can't remember the name I gave this one:
The afterlife is the greedy man's dream,
It's the hope of lovers,
And a scholars chance at immeasurable knowledge.
It's the clergyman's answer to his absurd existance,
An aspiration more vain than life itself.
With these perceptions a mere fraction of the whole,
The afterlife dangles in uncertainty.
It's the weight of your mark, not the size,
And Life, is the vessel for immortality.
And now I can't even find a copy of the other poem anywhere. Maybe I'll look for it again tomorrow.
I'll say I found her floating face down and I won't let them hurt you, I swear, from the crystal to the crucifix, I will always be with you. So if I go to hell for this I guess I'll meet you there.