When I was browsing Thursday night looking for information about pacing, I came across a quote from “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing a Novel.” Not being a complete idiot, I’m not normally attracted to such books, but the quote was well-written and made sense and clarified something I hadn’t quite thought through, so I went to Amazon and had a look at the book itself. Naturally I read the reviews. And had to laugh.
The first few are very favorable. The book was pretty cheap used, so normally I’d have decided after maybe two reviews that I’d give it a shot, but the two I read mentioned unfavorable reviews others had left. So I read on. From here:
Unlike a lot of writing guide books, Monteleone actually tells us that all writers should aspire to be on the New York Times Best Seller List. Â Now, throughout the years I have heard of lot of writers and novelists cautioning their creative writing classes about the consequences of “writing for profit.” If you make money on the way, that’s great. But making money shouldn’t be your biggest reason in writing novels or short stories.
Come on, people. “Writing for profit” means you get paid to do what you love. If you don’t want to get paid, don’t bother studying how to write, no one is ever going to know or care if you are any good at it. What these teachers were warning about is catering to the market. If you buy the top five best-selling books and analyze them and decide a sure-fire blockbuster is Two Little Girls in Blue from Dark Harbor by way of Oakdale Confidential eating Dark Tort until it’s Gone, (taken from here, the current NYT list), guess what? You’re going to write one crappy novel.
But if you write the absolute best novel you can with the plan of pouring your heart and soul into the marketing as well as the writing because damn it your book deserves the bestseller lists and people deserve the chance to enjoy it? What the hell is wrong with that?
Keep in mind I have not yet read the book. But I still find the negative reviews laughable.
He even has a whole chapter dedicated on promoting and marketing your novel (such as radio shows, press release, websites, etc.), but barely touches on the subject of getting an agent. After devoting roughly 30 pages on how to sell your book, he makes a few jokes and remarks about literary agents and then moves on to other topics without telling us where and how we can go about obtaining one. His message is clear: “Making profit should be the writer’s ONLY goal.”
Okay, I can see the complaint about the lack of info on agents, but only because I’d really rather have all that work done by someone else, and I’d be willing to part with the 15% to get out of it. But then she says that about the message being that making profit should be the writer’s ONLY goal. Because he doesn’t believe in the necessity of agents? What is the purpose of an agent except to get you more money for what you do?
And btw–my understanding is, you won’t get an agent till you sell something, so yeah, you’re gonna need to know how to market your own damn novel.
Also, Monteleone is not shy about showing his disdain towards academics and people who dismiss the so-called “drugstore books” as low-end. He thinks they are cocky and therefore deserves no respect from him… He lists a bunch of writers who were “the crassest commerical writers of their time” — Twain, Poe, Dickens, London, Hemingway, etc. But what about writers like Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce and Kafka who were not commercial writers? Monteleone seems to be certain that people will still read Stephen King and Danielle Steel 100 years later.
So much there to mock…I have a great deal of disdain for those who dismiss “drugstore books” as low-end too. For the same reasons Monteleone apparently has. Just because a book is popular does not mean it is bad! I’ve read a lot that were–and I’ve read a lot that weren’t. And yeah, actually, I do think people will be reading Stephen King in a hundred years. And probably Danielle Steele as well. Just as people still watch and enjoy what everyone acknowledged even when they were made to be “B” movies.
One of the absurd rules he strongly suggest that we enforce while writing is “writing three pages a day.” I have read other books on creative writing, and although many professional novelists stress the importance of writing steadily everyday, Monteleone is the first one to say that we HAVE TO write three pages a day. His reason for this ridiculous rule? Simple. The faster you write, more books you can sell down the road. The issue of profit-driven writing surfaces again.
Excuse me while I snicker. I’m (slightly) sorry, and maybe it makes me as arrogant as she says Monteleone is–but the writer of this review is clearly a literary artiste, who may labor days for the correct word and won’t go on until she’s got it…
But more on that when I write the “write every day even if it’s crap” blog. Which this was going to be, but I got distracted again.