General

“I don’t expect everyone to hang on my every word online, but…”

R. J. Nello

The weekend is nearly upon us. And to finish off this week, once more we rejoin Twitter’s writers!:

The Sun Also Rises by… Oh, you must know his name.

[Photo by me, 2019.]

I am STILL separately working my way through War And Peace.

Just because a certain Mr. King pens weird suspense stories and does not like them, that does not make him czar of English grammar. As I have written before, everyone from Shakespeare to Scott Fitzgerald used adverbs. You have nothing to apologize for.

Sure, I would like to attract more readers. However, the last thing I want is to be a household name. “Fame” is greatly overrated and generally far more trouble than it is worth.

Interestingly, there isn’t only one Mr. King. He is not alone by any means. He is actually a prime example of my (now late) uncle’s assertion that an author doesn’t have much hope of major long-term financial success just writing: he/she needs a book to be adapted into a film or television.

King’s fourth novel became a hit paperback. But far bigger it was adapted into a major film. With that film he was then truly off of “the bread line”… and his subsequent stories and books were taken more seriously, including as films and potential films.

A success momentum all its own then developed and has been with him ever since.

Yes, but not enough yet to anywhere near support myself and my wife with it. (See previous tweet.)

My most recent novels’ MC (that’s insider author-speak for “main character”) is a twenty-one year New Yorker from the then upstate frontier who finds himself adrift in cosmopolitan Europe starting in 1787.

But the story would not work in the slightest without the, uh, two/deux ladies with whom he falls in love there.

I had thought of it as primarily, uh, great literature. Yep, it was all about the writing. But considering it now as the “epic-like” two novels it is thus far (with another eventually), I am thinking gosh darn it but it would sure as heck make a fantastic film or, more likely, say, an Amazon Prime Video original mini-series.🤔 (See previous two tweets.)

Indeed I’d start that third installment this afternoon if I knew it was needed for the film or miniseries! LOL!

Defined by Dictionary.com:

“Masculine”: 1) pertaining to or characteristic of a man or men: masculine attire.

2) having qualities traditionally ascribed to men, as strength and boldness.

“Toxic masculinity” means to me masculinity that especially negatively impacts a woman or women.

Zelda Fitzgerald (F. Scott’s wife) famously chided Ernest Hemingway once about his – she felt – obsession with the masculine: “Ernest, no one is as male as all that.”

I was… Born In the USA.

Neither. They should be treated exactly the same way – as vital.

You, sir, are a good person.

Office Word.

That outreach is believed to be what the #writingcommunity needs?😳

That is a wonderful compliment. Well done.

You now have to decide if you want your vision or the cash.

Which is often what being an author comes down to: having perhaps to “sell out.”

My area: historical romantic fiction. They did not have “casual trysts” pre-1900 as is “the norm” in our “hook up” and Tinder and 3rd date sex century because sex often resulted in pregnancy. Crude condoms – sheepskin – were around, but were not regularly used and might not work even when one was used. Most married women spent many of their years from age 18 to around 40 pregnant.

[Excerpt from Conventions: The Garden At Paris, Copyright, 2017. On Kindle for iPhone/iPad. Click to expand.]

Modern birth control, the Pill especially, has changed the world in terms of sexual activity. Prior to its existence was why young single women and young men (single or not) were usually kept rigidly separated. Older women in particular knew what those scheming young men were really, uh, after: “Sir, I hope you are well-placed to marry with my daughter now!”

If messing around out of wedlock lovemaking occurred, it was probably most “safely” engaged in by a man with a woman who was married to another man, for if she fell pregnant she could at least pass the child off as her husband’s. That “illicit” behavior happened, we are now learning thanks to DNA tracing, QUITE A LOT. Researchers keep running into “breaks” in DNA in family trees because as they go back generation after generation, eventually they may discover “great-great granddad” was, uh, not in all likelihood the biological father who is named on the birth or baptismal paper.

Ah, romance in the 1800s and for all time before. LOL!

I share generalities – as any regular visitor here since 2014 knows. I think that is a way to place what I am working on before readers of previous books and potential new readers. But only in parts. I never circulate – ever – my entire manuscript to anyone I don’t know well and trust. Thieves do exist.

I think the concept of so-called “beta-readers” is not only dangerous in that sense but also artistically badly flawed. (I explain why in more detail here.) Aside from uncredited proofreaders, my books are 100 percent written by me. There are no “inputs” from an “online committee” of people I don’t know… for if I were to allow substantive changes based on others’ opinions, they really should at least get editing credit or even co-authorship.

Curiously, I had this, uh, oddly detached comment yesterday under an Instagram post. It comes from an author – we follow each other – who is a regular commenter and who I had considered a “friend” interested in my work. Out of the blue as you see for some reason she decided to ask me…

[From Instagram.]

And I could only but think: WTF? That novel is now complete for nearly a month and it was not as if I had “hidden” that fact: I don’t go on and on about it on Instagram, I know, but I have mentioned it and she has “liked” such posts. She posted that question without evidently thinking it could leave her appearing that she doesn’t really read even my posts that she “likes.”

So – let’s be honest – if she could not even be bothered to click over just to my Insta profile, or to my blog here for “15 seconds,” to answer that question for herself first…

[My current header, as of November 15, 2019.]

…because she is too lazy or distracted “liking” and “commenting” on hundreds of other posts on Insta and Twitter, do you think I would actually entrust so-called “beta-reading” of a 600 page manuscript to her, much less to total strangers? Seriously?

I don’t expect everyone to hang on my every word online, but with that single daft comment she blasted to smithereens any notions I had had that she pays much attention to my posts even when she “likes” them. That leads me also to conclude she comments on my posts mostly to try to draw attention to herself from my other followers. It is close to how a sp*mmer behaves.

She follows over 3,000 people on Instagram, and 9,000 on Twitter too, including me. In comparison I follow only about 270 on Insta and about 150 so far on Twitter… because I actually do try to READ people’s posts and tweets. I had been reasonably interested in writing experiences she shares, but I’ll certainly remember from now on that she does not much reciprocate to say the least.

My (now late) uncle had warned me about that type. LOL! (While talking with you, they are always first and foremost looking for how to boost themselves somehow.)

I have decided the best reply to that comment is silence. I am just going to ignore it. After all, if she somehow missed that I finished a novel in mid-October… I am certainly allowed to have “missed” that comment.

Excellent. Best of luck. Be true to yourself.

And everyone, have a good day, wherever you are! 🙂

5 thoughts on ““I don’t expect everyone to hang on my every word online, but…””

    1. One guy who writes suspense and even horror novels does not “Academie Amerique” make! The idolizing of him baffles me. He’s a decent writer (I’m told), but he’s not another Voltaire for goodness sakes. Ugh! As for that novel… uh… well… 😂😂😂😂😂😂

      Liked by 1 person

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      1. Like any other writer, I enjoy reading about an author’s success, and his story, On Writing, made for some pretty entertaining reading, all the more so because I was prepared for a book on craft. Even though he does discuss that, the story of his life was definitely added entertainment value and my favorite part. Additionally, he is a pretty salty character which made me smile. I admire him for his success, but there are other writers certainly that I look up to as I’m not a horror genre girl. We are enjoying a glorious cold front today. Hope you are enjoying your weekend! ☀️🌴🌺

        Liked by 1 person

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        1. Cool and rainy here today – there’s a shock!😂 I once tried to read Carrie… and I got thru only a few pages before I put it down. It’s just not my thing. (Which I’m sure stuns you.) He’s entitled to all the success he has, but I have found all of the treating him as some sort of writing royalty on social media to be over the top – especially the adverb quote. If I see that in another Instagram post or tweet I may go gloriously bananas. LOL!

          Liked by 1 person

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