with John W. Howell
I am very pleased that the Paperbook Collective has published one of my short stories in the third edition. You can go to the site: http://issuu.com/jaydeashe/docs/the_paperbook_collective_issue_thre/1?e=0 and read the story and look at the rest of the fine collection. My story begins on page nine, but you might want to look at the others.
The Collective is interested in other submissions as well. You can go here: The Paperbook Collective for more information.
I did a post last week on Fiction Favorites titled Dialog is as Dialog Does where I attempted to demonstrate some of the principles necessary for good dialog. The piece is a bit of flash fiction that contained only dialog and really no context with the idea that the reader could figure out the story with just the dialog and no tags. You can read it here http://wp.me/p2Qoij-s5 if you would like to contrast it to what I am about to cover. This post will take the dialog from the last which had no tags and add tags that are totally inappropriate. By inappropriate I don’t mean offensive or derisive but really unnecessary to either the story or the conversation.
The reason I am doing this is to hopefully point out some of the glaring mistakes that new writer’s make in wanting to over explain the situation in a dialog setting. The true test of good dialog is the ability of the writer to separate conversations so that the reader knows exactly who is talking. Also good dialog should move the story along without causing the reader to be forced to stop and think about what the writer has laid out. So here we go.
John Howard by John Howell © 2013
“Can I help you young man?” the woman behind the desk asks.
“Yes I am here to see the president,” I reply with a bit of urgency.
“Is he expecting you?” she says with an eyebrow raised.
“He should be. I sent him a letter and said I was going to stop by,” I respond back with a note of irritation in my voice.
“A letter?” she says with surprise in her voice.
“Yes,” I counter with a sense of superiority
“When did you send a letter?” she questions with some doubtfulness.
“I guess it was about a month ago. The letter asked that my correct name be used since there has been a computer error and the University keeps calling me Howard instead of Howell,” I say almost running out of breath.
“Did Dr. Hannah respond to the letter?” she asks with an interrogator’s tone.
“Yes he did. I got a nice letter back. Here is a copy read it for yourself,” I say handing her the letter.
“Humm. Dr Hannah specifically thanked you for your correspondence and indicated that he would look into your problem. You say that your name is Howell and not Howard?” she says while looking over her glasses.
“Yes it has been Howell for the last nineteen years,” I reply with a certain air of smugness.
“Yet the letter from Dr. Hannah is addressed to John Howard,” she points out handing the letter back to me.
“This is why I need to see him,” I say forcibly.
“Wait here Mr. Howard. Let me see if I can find someone to help,” she says and then turns to go.
“It’s Howell,” I call out to her back.
“Excuse me?” she questions as she stops and slowly turns around to look at me.
“My name is Howell not Howard,” I repeat directly to her.
“Oh yes that is what I said. Howard,” she says and continues to move away.
“Howell,” I say even louder as she gets further from the room.
“I said Howard not Howell,” she calls back to me.
“I know,” I say and sigh loudly.
“Very well Mr. Howard, I will be right back,” she says and begins to move again.
“Howell,” I raise my voice
“I am only trying to help,” she says with an expression of irritation on her face.
“I’m sure,” I sort of blurt out sarcastically.
“I think you should call for an appointment. Good day Mr. Howard,” she says and disappears through the door way behind the desk.
If you found this dialog off setting and somewhat clumsy you are probably on the right track to great dialog in your writing. In my mind (although not an expert) this entire scene did not benefit from any of the stage directions that were added into the tags. I also believe the story itself lost some of the power of authoritarianism and tension that was present in the original.
Have a great weekend
Since this is a blog about fiction favorites I thought I would take a little detour. Rather than discuss a particular piece of fiction I would like to take you on a small journey and tell a story that is real but sounds like fiction. The key difference between a fictional story and reality is fiction remains under the author’s control as to the outcomes. In real life, however, stories unfold and are seemingly under the pen of fate. We witness happy, sad and horrifying stories every day and many without satisfying resolution.
I would like to tell you a little story about a Boxer and it is not fiction and does have a satisfying resolution.
My wife got a call from Austin Boxer Rescue to see if she could drive to Kingsville (Texas. Home of the King Ranch) and pick up a boxer from the Kingsville animal shelter. The Boxer’s name was Macie. It seems the owner needed to move and asked a friend to take care of Macie. The so-called friend for unknown reasons chained Macie in the backyard where she had little access to food, shelter or water. The authorities finally came to investigate and seeing the horrible conditions took Macie to the shelter. The mother of the owner came to the shelter and surrendered Macie to the city. The city called Austin Boxer Rescue because Macie was a boxer and so Macie came to stay at our house until a foster home could be found.
I would like to show you a picture of how Macie looked when she arrived, but the WordPress police would give me a citation. Let’s just say her condition brought tears to our eyes. Macie at one time was well taken care of and has great heart. She survived in spite of the abuse at the hand of a very cruel and ignorant person. When she first came to us we bathed her and removed the fleas and ticks. Macie was clearly relieved to be at the hands of those who cared. She never stopped wagging her tail and loved being patted and hugged.
Macie was transported to Austin where she received medical care and exposure to a number of willing adoptive people. One person, a little girl even drew a picture of Macie after seeing her on the Austin Boxer Website www.austinboxerrescue.com
At the same time, the organization was running out of funds to help Macie and it asked friends and members through a Facebook feed to donate as little as five dollars to help Macie receive the care she needed. To date; over $60,000 has been raised. Obviously Macie touched the heart of many. Where is Macie now? As someone once said a picture is worth a thousand words. Macie and the little girl who drew her picture are now together in their forever home. Here is a picture of the two of them right after Macie was adopted.
The final picture is of Macie as she looks now with only one month of care.
Oh one more thing; you may wonder why the title of this post is Ruby is as Ruby Does? Well that is Macie’s new name given to her by her little sister.
I was again surfing the net (sigh) looking for Fiction Favorites material and stumbled on to the following blog written by the staff writers at http://www.onlineuniversities.com/blog. I thought the blog was the kind of thing that needs to be republished since it was originally put up in July 2010. You can click on the various holidays for more information
if you have interest. So here it is and I hope you enjoy.
Eleven Literary Holidays That Every Book Lover Should Know
If you’re a literature lover, you should take every opportunity you can to revel in your love of good books. Luckily, there are a few days or weeks set aside in the year that promote doing just that. Here are some fun and educational holidays that will let you appreciate great works of literature, spend time at your library and even help you create some writing of your own.
Have a great Weekend and don’t be tempted to start your Limerick with: “There once was a man from Nantucket…”
The wind has been whipping the Gulf of Mexico into frenzy. Gusts have been up to sixty miles an hour which will lift the old toupee. (If you have one) Being outside is not the best; with sand and salt coming at you like it was made in a factory. Our little Silky Terrier did a yeoman’s job of staying on the ground but she did resemble the appearance of what you would imagine a Dallas socialite in a wind tunnel to look like. Her hair was everywhere and I could tell she knew it was not right. The boxer did her best to keep her wet nose downwind so to speak. Since the sand was sticking to anything moist she needed to keep pointing to avoid an eventual clog.
The weather is not the best, but it is sure a good time to get some of those writing chores out-of-the-way. I say chore because sometimes working on a novel day in and day out leads one to a case of the shaking bores. I don’t think this is an actual medical term but for me the symptoms are as follows:
So I guess eventually when I get all the bores out-of-the-way I really do return to writing. This is a very good thing and I’ll bet all of you do the same. Sometimes we need to give ourselves permission to goof off knowing full well that we will return to the thing we love, (Crabmeat..just kidding) WRITING.
So if you must, give yourself a little slack and go kill a frozen pizza. You’ll be better for it.
As you can see I love lists. I stumbled across the Modern Library’s governing board’s list of the greatest books of the twentieth century. The board members were: Christopher Cerf, Gore Vidal, Daniel J. Boorstin, Shelby Foote, Vartan Gregorian, A.S. Byatt, Edmund Morris, John Richardson, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and William Styron.
This list was put together in 1999 and is ranked from first to last. There was a lot of controversy when the list was published (Not enough women, too many North American and English authors, and general bias) but it is still a pretty good list for anyone who wants a number of books from which to choose. I will say no more here it is: BTW you can click on the link and see the New York Times review when the book came out
1.”Ulysses,” James Joyce
2. “The Great Gatsby,” F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” James Joyce
4. “Lolita,” Vladimir Nabokov
5. “Brave New World,” Aldous Huxley
6. “The Sound and the Fury,” William Faulkner
7. “Catch-22,” Joseph Heller
8. “Darkness at Noon,” Arthur Koestler
9. “Sons and Lovers,” D. H. Lawrence
10. “The Grapes of Wrath,” John Steinbeck
11. “Under the Volcano,” Malcolm Lowry
12. “The Way of All Flesh,” Samuel Butler
13. “1984,” George Orwell
14. “I, Claudius,” Robert Graves
15. “To the Lighthouse,” Virginia Woolf
16. “An American Tragedy,” Theodore Dreiser
17. “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter,” Carson McCullers
18. “Slaughterhouse Five,” Kurt Vonnegut
19. “Invisible Man,” Ralph Ellison
20. “Native Son,” Richard Wright
21. “Henderson the Rain King,” Saul Bellow
22. “Appointment in Samarra,” John O’ Hara
23. “U.S.A.” (trilogy), John Dos Passos
24. “Winesburg, Ohio,” Sherwood Anderson
25. “A Passage to India,” E. M. Forster
26. “The Wings of the Dove,” Henry James
27. “The Ambassadors,” Henry James
28. “Tender Is the Night,” F. Scott Fitzgerald
29. “The Studs Lonigan Trilogy,” James T. Farrell
30. “The Good Soldier,” Ford Madox Ford
31. “Animal Farm,” George Orwell
32. “The Golden Bowl,” Henry James
33. “Sister Carrie,” Theodore Dreiser
34. “A Handful of Dust,” Evelyn Waugh
35. “As I Lay Dying,” William Faulkner
36. “All the King’s Men,” Robert Penn Warren
37. “The Bridge of San Luis Rey,” Thornton Wilder
38. “Howards End,” E. M. Forster
39. “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” James Baldwin
40. “The Heart of the Matter,” Graham Greene
41. “Lord of the Flies,” William Golding
42. “Deliverance,” James Dickey
43. “A Dance to the Music of Time” (series), Anthony Powell
44. “Point Counter Point,” Aldous Huxley
45. “The Sun Also Rises,” Ernest Hemingway
46. “The Secret Agent,” Joseph Conrad
47. “Nostromo,” Joseph Conrad
48. “The Rainbow,” D. H. Lawrence
49. “Women in Love,” D. H. Lawrence
50. “Tropic of Cancer,” Henry Miller
51. “The Naked and the Dead,” Norman Mailer
52. “Portnoy’s Complaint,” Philip Roth
53. “Pale Fire,” Vladimir Nabokov
54. “Light in August,” William Faulkner
55. “On the Road,” Jack Kerouac
56. “The Maltese Falcon,” Dashiell Hammett
57. “Parade’s End,” Ford Madox Ford
58. “The Age of Innocence,” Edith Wharton
59. “Zuleika Dobson,” Max Beerbohm
60. “The Moviegoer,” Walker Percy
61. “Death Comes to the Archbishop,” Willa Cather
62. “From Here to Eternity,” James Jones
63. “The Wapshot Chronicles,” John Cheever
64. “The Catcher in the Rye,” J. D. Salinger
65. “A Clockwork Orange,” Anthony Burgess
66. “Of Human Bondage,” W. Somerset Maugham
67. “Heart of Darkness,” Joseph Conrad
68. “Main Street,” Sinclair Lewis
69. “The House of Mirth,” Edith Wharton
70. “The Alexandria Quartet,” Lawrence Durrell
71. “A High Wind in Jamaica,” Richard Hughes
72. “A House for Ms. Biswas,” V. S. Naipaul
73. “The Day of the Locust,” Nathaniel West
74. “A Farewell to Arms,” Ernest Hemingway
75. “Scoop,” Evelyn Waugh
76. “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” Muriel Spark
77. “Finnegans Wake,” James Joyce
78. “Kim,” Rudyard Kipling
79. “A Room With a View,” E. M. Forster
80. “Brideshead Revisited,” Evelyn Waugh
81. “The Adventures of Augie March,” Saul Bellow
82. “Angle of Repose,” Wallace Stegner
83. “A Bend in the River,” V. S. Naipaul
84. “The Death of the Heart,” Elizabeth Bowen
85. “Lord Jim,” Joseph Conrad
86. “Ragtime,” E. L. Doctorow
87. “The Old Wives’ Tale,” Arnold Bennett
88. “The Call of the Wild,” Jack London
89. “Loving,” Henry Green
90. “Midnight’s Children,” Salman Rushdie
91. “Tobacco Road,” Erskine Caldwell
92. “Ironweed,” William Kennedy
93. “The Magus,” John Fowles
94. “Wide Sargasso Sea,” Jean Rhys
95. “Under the Net,” Iris Murdoch
96. “Sophie’s Choice,” William Styron
97. “The Sheltering Sky,” Paul Bowles
98. “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” James M. Cain
99. “The Ginger Man,” J. P. Donleavy
100. “The Magnificent Ambersons,” Booth Tarkington
Nostrovia is a fine blog on poetry. Here is the link: http://wp.me/s2SbOP-357 . Please feel free to visit; you will like it.
It is also a place where great ideas pop up. This week the idea is a writing prompt around the following: “Those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
The idea is to interpret the words in any fashion. I have chosen a flash fiction piece. Hope you like it.
The Song
The two singer/song writers finish putting the final touches on the last song for their new album due to be recorded day after tomorrow. They have been at it steady for the last thirty-six hours.
“I’m beat. All I want to do is lay down somewhere. Don’t really care where,” Jerry says.
“Yeah mate,” says Brice. “I’m dead on my feet. Coffee doesn’t work.”
“Those final lyrics in the last stanza are really good.”
“You think?”
“I am really in love with what you did there.”
“Y’know Jerry. I think I love you too.”
“I said I was in love with what you did. I could give a shit about you.”
“Aw come on mate. You know we are a team.”
“I wish we had an opinion of the music before we record. I like it. You like it, but will it sell?”
“Getting someone to listen shouldn’t be too hard. It is about breakfast time. Let’s go down on the street and find someone who will be willing to come up and listen.”
“Who the hell is going to stop their day to listen to music, and while I am at it, who in the hell is going to follow two crazy looking, smelly guys up here to our studio to listen?”
“What if we offer someone some money? Say fifty bucks.”
Brice you are a lunatic, but I don’t have a better idea. Let’s go troll for a listener.”
Jerry and Brice move toward the door and on the way pick up their guitars. It was Jerry’s idea to take the instruments to add a degree of professionalism to what he is sure to be a crazy sounding scheme. Jerry opens the door to their studio and standing poised to knock on the door is a young girl about eighteen or so. Brice and Jerry look at each other and pass a communication that maybe a trip downstairs might not be necessary.
“Can we help you?” Jerry says.
“My name is Cynthia Simon and I am collecting for the St James School for the hearing impaired.”
“Please come in,” says Brice.
“Oh I am not allowed to come into homes. Only ask for a donation.”
“I understand completely. Maybe you could help us.”
Cynthia takes a step back. “Help? How?”
Brice and I have written a song and we need to sing and play it for someone to see if they like it or not. You would be perfect since we think the song will appeal to someone your age.”
“Well…I guess it would be okay as long as I stand out here.”
“Great. You stand there and we’ll do the song from here.”
Brice looks at Jerry and gives him the downbeat. They sing their song as if they were auditioning for Carnegie Hall. They never sang it with so much force before. It was magnificent. They finish and look expectantly at Cynthia for her reaction.
“Well,” Cynthia says. “I liked the words but I think the tune was used on a Go Daddy commercial during the Super Bowl.”
Jerry and Brice are dumfounded. They look at each other, then Brice goes to the piano and picks up the music.
“How much did we pay for this?” He is holding the music above his head.
“I don’t know, but I was told it was an original score.”
“Who the hell told you it was original?” Brice is now starting to get red in the face.
“His agent. She told me it was original.”
Brice throws the music back on the piano. “You’re telling me that tone-deaf agent told you the music was original and you bought it?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“Did you get a signed release?”
“Um…No.”
“So here we are with a song with great lyrics and according to Cynthia here, a tune that was last assigned to Go Daddy on a Super Bowl commercial. We also have only two days until we record and you tell me we have no legal ground to stand on? “
“Yeah I guess so.”
“This reminds me of people thinking dancers are nuts cause they can’t hear the music. I think we are nuts because we can’t recognize a flipping tune that has been played on the flipping Super Bowl.
“Uh…wait a minute,” Jerry says. He turns to Cynthia. “You said you were collecting for a school for hearing impaired.”
“Yes I am.”
“Why are you doing that? Do you go there?”
“Why yes I do.”
Brice and Jerry smile at Cynthia and then at each other. “Of course you do,” says Brice. He reaches for his wallet.
I went online just before the Super Bowl on Sunday to see if I could find out just how many books had been written about the Super Bowl. To most of you; the answer to this question is about as important as finding out how many calories in a hot fudge sundae. Once you know the answer then what? I had no plans to take the information and maybe justify to myself why there is room for yet another book about the Super Bowl and then go to work composing. Nope, that wasn’t the reason. I just wondered that’s all. I think the connection between being a writer and wondering about who wrote what- about- who just comes naturally. When I explain this natural wonder to others who don’t write, I get the slow back up and the patronizing nods of the head that seem to have as a purpose warding off a bigger meltdown.
Ah but I digress. (Another statement that convinces people I am certifiable) Anyway, I was not able to get the answer. I did come across some tidbits that I thought could be used during slow moments at wakes and cocktail hours. Did you know that Google has estimated that there are 129,864,880 books in the entire world? What is really interesting is to go on-line and actually read how Google came to that estimate which includes all the books published ever. This estimate was developed in spite of the fact that the ISBN system has only been available in the Western World for less than forty years. I can just see you walking up to some hapless innocent at your next cocktail reception and holding them in rapt attention. “Can you believe that there are only 129,864,880 books on the planet so I guess there is room for my next million seller.” Wow what an impact.
I also found a list of what Martin Seymour-Smith a British poet thinks are the top 100 most influential books ever published. His book is titled The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written: The History of Thought from Ancient Times to Today. Although done in 1998 it is an interesting compilation.
My observation: The first eighty books were published prior to 1900. It is probable that none of us have working knowledge of too many of the books written prior to the twentieth century. Of course, some of them were required reading in specific courses of study (Dante’s Divine Comedy for example). The remaining twenty have familiar themes and are basically non-fiction, but here they are as published on Wikipedia.
The entire list can be seen at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_100_Most_Influential_Books_Ever_Written
More research activity turned up an interesting article at Mental_Floss written by Stacy Conradt titled; 11 Authors Who Hated the Movie Versions of Their Books. I thought it interesting since there are listed some pretty good movies and some surprising reasons why the authors of the original story hated them. Here is a recap of the article’s substance and you will see what I mean:
Mary Poppins – P.L. Travers loathed the movie’s animated sequences and was perturbed that Mary Poppins’ strict side was downplayed.
The Shining – Stephen King felt the director Stanley Kubrick couldn’t grasp the sheer inhuman evil of The Overlook Hotel. So he looked, instead, for evil in the characters and made the film into a domestic tragedy with only vaguely supernatural overtones.
Interview with the Vampire – Anne Rice thought the casting was “so bizarre,” she said, “It’s almost impossible to imagine how it’s going to work.” When she saw the movie, however, she actually loved Cruise’s portrayal and told him what an impressive job he had done. She still hasn’t come around to liking Queen of the Damned, though, telling her Facebook fans to avoid seeing the film that “mutilated” her books.
Forrest Gump – Winston Groom did not like omission of plot points and sanitizing some of the language and sex. He also felt he was not paid what he was owed. He started the Gump sequel with the lines, “Don’t never let nobody make a movie of your life’s story,” and “Whether they get it right or wrong, it don’t matter.”
Sahara – Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt tales have a cult following. Dirk Pitt movies don’t, especially Sahara which was a certified flop: the $145 million production made just $68 million at the box office. Cussler said it was because the producer failed to give him total script control as agreed upon and sued for $38 million. He lost. In fact, Cussler was ordered to pay $13.9 million for legal fees incurred by the Sahara production company. Though that order was overturned in 2010, it’s safe to say that Cussler probably won’t be pursuing that relationship again.
Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger consented to have his short story Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut made into a movie retitled My Foolish Heart. He was so mortified by the swooning love story that he swore his works would never be butchered again and there has not been a movie made of Catcher in the Rye.
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess disliked the movie based on his novella A Clockwork Orange, he later regretted writing any of it in the first place. “The book I am best known for, or only known for, is a novel I am prepared to repudiate: written a quarter of a century ago, a jeu d’esprit knocked off for money in three weeks, it became known as the raw material for a film which seemed to glorify sex and violence. The film made it easy for readers of the book to misunderstand what it was about, and the misunderstanding will pursue me till I die. I should not have written the book because of this danger of misinterpretation.”
The Informers – Bret Easton Ellis says, “That movie doesn’t work for a lot reasons but I don’t think any of those reasons are my fault.”
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl felt the movie version of his book was “crummy,” found Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka to be “pretentious” and “bouncy,” and thought the director had “no talent or flair.” He vowed that film producers would never get their hands on the sequel to similarly ruin it, at least not in his lifetime.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey was not impressed. He was originally slated to help with the production, but left two weeks into the process. Though he claimed for a long time that he didn’t even watch it and was especially upset that they didn’t keep the viewpoint of Chief Bromden, his wife later said that he was glad the movie was made.
I Am Legend – Richard Matheson has been annoyed with the adaptations of his book since 1964. The first one, The Last Man on Earth, starred Vincent Price. “I was disappointed in The Last Man on Earth, even though they more or less followed my story. I think Vincent Price, whom I love in every one of his pictures that I wrote, was miscast. I also felt the direction was kind of poor.” Another version, The Omega Man, starred Charlton Heston. “The Omega Man was so removed from my book that it didn’t even bother me,” Matheson said. And when I Am Legend starring Will Smith was announced, the author commented, “I don’t know why Hollywood is fascinated by my book when they never care to film it as I wrote it.” The most recent adaptation, by the way, completely changed Matheson’s ending because it didn’t test well with audiences.
Read the full text here: http://mentalfloss.com/article/31001/11-authors-who-hated-movie-versions-their-books#ixzz2JfpV9NrF
–brought to you by mental_floss!
Thomas Wolfe has won a chest full of awards and honorary doctorate degrees for his work. Most of the recognition came as a result of his non-fiction work, (The Right Stuff; for example) although he did manage to pick up recognition for his fiction work as well. Not all the recognition for his fiction was positive and his major critics (Especially of A Man in Full) were fellow authors like; John Updike, Norman Mailer and John Irving. Their beef can be boiled down to an opinion that Thomas Wolfe’s books were entertainment and not literature.
Wolfe has written (so far) four fiction novels: The Bonfire of the Vanities in 1987, A Man in Full in 1998, I am Charlotte Simmons in 2004, and Back to Blood in 2012. As you can see, the minimum time between books is six years with the longest at eleven. In today’s environment, where an author like James Patterson publishes fourteen books in a given year, the question comes up as to why so long between books?
I have not interviewed Thomas Wolfe so I can’t actually provide the real reason, but I’ll bet it has something to do with patience. If you have read his books it is very apparent that the words are collected and crafted very carefully to convey the scene or mood being described. This kind of attention to detail cannot be done by all authors, and most specifically, almost impossible in a rushed situation. Wolfe has always aspired to document modern society in the tradition of John Steinbeck, so I believe he forces himself to exercise extreme patience to ensure that each paragraph lives up to his personal benchmark. This kind of self discipline takes time. As we all know when writing, time is the resource that we believe works against our goals. We feel we waste time if we don’t make deadlines that are self imposed. Can you imagine sitting down to begin your next novel and know that it will be eleven years until it is published. If you are like me; you would rather put a stick in your eye then to contemplate that reality.
On the other hand, if you were told that your novel done properly would earn you the recognition and honor you feel you deserve, would you be more content to take your time? I’ll bet you would. So why are we all in a hurry? Do we think someone else is going to scoop our plot or capitalize on our character development?
I think we should all ask ourselves a simple question when we feel that time is getting away from us; WHAT IS THE RUSH? Don’t we know a well-developed chapter is so much better than just getting the chapter finished? Don’t we know by now, a query letter done right is so much better than just getting it done? Don’t we know taking time on a well thought out synopsis is better than rushing a submission? A lot of questions I know, but the answer has to be that we know full well the need to be patient.
