So.
Dad's friend, who will be referred to as Professional Writer, actually called me yesterday. He was articulate and calm and very, very nice. He's a ghost writer. I had to look up what that was- it's the person people pay to write their stories for them, because he can write it so much better than they can.
I? I was a nervous wreck. I'm horrible over the phone anyway, so you can just imagine. Or maybe not- my awkwardness may be just unimaginable.
He was undeterred, thank goodness. He said that it became clear to him as he was reading my stuff that I was not a writer who wrote for fun or for their career, but that I wrote because I must, because I had to write.
He also said that I was a born writer. He said some writers spend years learning the craft of writing, but I did not need to do that; I knew instinctively how to do it. He said that I would spend years figuring out what it was that I most wanted to say, and the best way to say it.
He compared me to Hemmingway (!!!!) and the lady that wrote The Yearling (!!!!!), both authors who knew how to write, but had to write for years before they learned their own style and made the contacts that would make them professionally successful.
This man does not know me. He doesn't read my blog. He learned that after reading just ten pages of Ceallach.
So, then we moved on to areas needing improvement. I asked him about lack of flow, and he happily and very gently explained.
(The fellow treated me with kid gloves; he told me later that he was always scared talking to creative people like myself, for fear of interrupting their creative flow. Which made me laugh out loud; it just seemed to ironic, as I was utterly terrified of him, and his professional competence, contacts, poise and career.)
Anyway, he said that my thoughts and images were arranged almost as though in bunches. He said it was almost like looking through a photograph album; looking from picture to picture.
The e-mail had separated into these large gaps between each line, so he did say that it might have just been him reacting to the physical space between the physical lines of the story.
However, it really rang a bell with me- I think I do tend to bunch my ideas and thoughts, and move from one bunch to the other. It's the product of my writing something straight out of my private vision; that's the way I see the thing in my own head.
Anotherwards, what he is seeing is the thought patterns of my own imagination. Which is fascinating to me. I must more fully translate my thoughts from the visual language of my own imagination into the more cohesive flow of language.
Which I think means, I'm going to have really think about why it is that I need that image or thought pattern in the story, or what it is doing for the story, why it is there, and then tailor it for that purpose, or discard it.
His next piece of constructive criticism was harder to hear; he said that he was unable to relate to my characters. That's a doozy, right there. That's a major failure. He quickly went onto suggest that it wasn't so much my characterization as it was my genre.
He talked a great deal about Rowlings, the author of The Yearling, who wrote gothic novels for years and submitted them to her good friend, and editor, and he kept rejecting them. He told her to write about what she knew, and so she began writing about the Florida backwoods, and was very successful.
He said as I wrote, I would learn to be more brave and put more of myself into my characters. Which is ironic, because Phillipa is so much myself that my editor friend kept slipping up and writing "you" instead of Phillipa when she talked about the story.
However, Phillipa doesn't carry any of my weaknesses, other than a slight shyness. She has none of my anxieties, neurosis or scars. I must not have been ready to process those things in that story; I was too busy learning about plot construction and novel length.
But I am doing that in Torii. He has yet to read Torii, but he has some sections and will be reading it in the next few days and will call me back. I am very curious to know what he thinks. I have a feeling that he will again talk about genre, as the fantasy setting for Torii is so fantastical.
I'm not quite ready to switch genres, though. I don't want to be that grown up. Maybe one day.
Anyway, he said that one of his best friends is a publisher and she is always looking for new material, a fresh new voice and if he brought something to her, it'd pretty much get published. Or something. He said people come out of nowhere all the time, and become successful.
My mind was blanking out from sheer astonishment at this; I kept saying, "Oh my gosh," like an idiot. He cautioned me that it would have to be some of my best work, which I don't think I've written yet. But it was just something to consider, something to keep in the back of my mind.
Oh my gosh.
