Sometimes the photocopied note is a dead give away.
As a writer, I don’t get no respect. Just the other day I received a note from a publishing company on my submission. It read: “As a mystery novel, it’s just run-of-the-morgue.”
Shows you how much they read. There’s no morgue in my novel.
Let me just preface my remarks by saying I shouldn’t have prefaced my remarks.
My critique group can be rather direct. I turned in the first part of the novel, including the preface. One member said he doesn’t read prefaces or preludes or prologues of any kind.
Another one wrote this on in the margin of her critique: “Your preface states that the characters bear no resemblance to any person living or dead. That’s precisely what’s wrong with this story.”
I guess an epilogue is out of the question.
Giving short (story) shrift to a novel idea.
The other day I overheard two people in my writing workshop group talking about my work. One person said she wasn’t sure why, but she would prefer to read something else.
The other person said, “He’s putting everything he knows into his novel. It’s sure to be a short story.”
“And I probably still won’t like it,” the first person said.
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