Peter Boody's Blog: Inside Out: a not-so-smalltown editor's life - Posts Tagged "writing"
Teach kids to write news and save the country
(From my column in the Shelter Island Reporter this past summer}
A few generations ago, people who couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything else could always find a job in the news business and do pretty well in it. All they had to know was how to think logically and how to write clearly and pretty much everybody with at least a C average, back in those days, could do both.
Need a job? Go be a reporter until you find yourself. Just maybe you’ll discover that you like the gig. If not, it will put a few dollars in your pocket and teach you how to work hard and meet deadlines while you ponder the future.
From coast to coast, in small towns and big cities, kids learned grammar and sentence structure and had to master expository writing. I remember the red ink in the margins of my early efforts: “Clarity.” “Diction.” “Grammar.” “Logic.” Seeing those words on the page meant those things were missing or problematic.
So much has changed. An education is no longer an end unto itself, a good thing to have because it will make you a better person, a better member of the community, a better citizen — a thoughtful, independent person who can express him or herself effectively.
More than ever, education now is about the fragmented national economy and finding a place in it. Getting an education is just another consumer item now, with students and their parents publicly assessing the quality of their teachers and how much bang they’re getting for their tuition or tax bucks. That makes students the judges which, in some ways, turns the academic world upside down.
Everyone’s heard the bad news about American kids lagging behind those in many other countries with their math and science skills. I don’t recall hearing much about their verbal and writing skills. But as someone who has hired many young people over the years to work as cub reporters, it’s my opinion that writing skills have been on the decline for decades.
One clue is the fact that so many job applicants submit clips from their college newspapers that are not hard news stories but music or movie reviews, opinion pieces, or personal essays. Or there might be a light feature, written in the first person and full of hyperbole, as might be expected of a barely rewritten press release.
Self-indulgence doesn’t work well in a hard news story. Is that why nobody wants to write them anymore? It has been many, many years since I’ve seen a good hard news story in a job applicant’s clips. It gives me the impression that a lot of high school and college newspapers are full of fluffy writing. That means, to me, their publications aren’t really newspapers and the students writing for them are not learning how to be journalists.
How would they know the difference? So few young people read newspapers. They don’t even watch network news, which is no longer an example of well-written, well-edited journalism anyway: stories are pretty vague and fuzzy and too full of unanswered questions. But it’s about as close as mass culture can get these days to old-fashioned news, at least in its essential form.
You may ask: So what, Mr. Grump? So what if kids are clueless about old-fashioned newspaper writing?
A person who could write a good news story, if required to do so in some gruesome spot test, knows how to:
• Think logically and critically in order to assess a topic and decide what questions need to be to asked to fully explain it from beginning to end.
• Suppress personal opinion in order to anticipate all the questions and gather all the necessary facts.
• Deal in specifics instead of generalities.
• Use simple, clear and precise language.
• Tell the difference between baloney and substance.
• Set priorities in terms of importance in order to properly organize the facts.
• Exercise judgment in pondering the hows, the whys and the “so whats” of a story.
If you grew up reading newspapers, and could ape their writing style, you taught yourself a lot of these skills. If you grow up Tweeting and texting and throwing up blurbs on Facebook, you might never learn any of it. One effect of that is you’ll lack the ability to think critically and you’ll be an easy mark for corporate and political marketing in this age of hype, infomercials, advertorials, secret sponsorships, product placements, public places named for big companies and vending machines in the schools.
I’m getting so cranky I think there may be a plot at work to achieve that effect. One little clue as an example: the media no longer refers to the Democratic Caucus in the House; it refers to the Democrat Caucus, with the word “Democrat” sort of spat in contempt when spoken. Who masterminded that weird shift in political correctness? It sure wasn’t the heirs of Strunk or White. I bet it was Karl Rove … and our noble independent media went right along with him.
Schools should be trying to counteract the aspects of our culture that degrade expository writing skills and therefore basic common-sense thinking skills. It would be a great idea for high schools to make freshmen learn how to write a good news story. It could be fun. It could save the country.
A few generations ago, people who couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything else could always find a job in the news business and do pretty well in it. All they had to know was how to think logically and how to write clearly and pretty much everybody with at least a C average, back in those days, could do both.
Need a job? Go be a reporter until you find yourself. Just maybe you’ll discover that you like the gig. If not, it will put a few dollars in your pocket and teach you how to work hard and meet deadlines while you ponder the future.
From coast to coast, in small towns and big cities, kids learned grammar and sentence structure and had to master expository writing. I remember the red ink in the margins of my early efforts: “Clarity.” “Diction.” “Grammar.” “Logic.” Seeing those words on the page meant those things were missing or problematic.
So much has changed. An education is no longer an end unto itself, a good thing to have because it will make you a better person, a better member of the community, a better citizen — a thoughtful, independent person who can express him or herself effectively.
More than ever, education now is about the fragmented national economy and finding a place in it. Getting an education is just another consumer item now, with students and their parents publicly assessing the quality of their teachers and how much bang they’re getting for their tuition or tax bucks. That makes students the judges which, in some ways, turns the academic world upside down.
Everyone’s heard the bad news about American kids lagging behind those in many other countries with their math and science skills. I don’t recall hearing much about their verbal and writing skills. But as someone who has hired many young people over the years to work as cub reporters, it’s my opinion that writing skills have been on the decline for decades.
One clue is the fact that so many job applicants submit clips from their college newspapers that are not hard news stories but music or movie reviews, opinion pieces, or personal essays. Or there might be a light feature, written in the first person and full of hyperbole, as might be expected of a barely rewritten press release.
Self-indulgence doesn’t work well in a hard news story. Is that why nobody wants to write them anymore? It has been many, many years since I’ve seen a good hard news story in a job applicant’s clips. It gives me the impression that a lot of high school and college newspapers are full of fluffy writing. That means, to me, their publications aren’t really newspapers and the students writing for them are not learning how to be journalists.
How would they know the difference? So few young people read newspapers. They don’t even watch network news, which is no longer an example of well-written, well-edited journalism anyway: stories are pretty vague and fuzzy and too full of unanswered questions. But it’s about as close as mass culture can get these days to old-fashioned news, at least in its essential form.
You may ask: So what, Mr. Grump? So what if kids are clueless about old-fashioned newspaper writing?
A person who could write a good news story, if required to do so in some gruesome spot test, knows how to:
• Think logically and critically in order to assess a topic and decide what questions need to be to asked to fully explain it from beginning to end.
• Suppress personal opinion in order to anticipate all the questions and gather all the necessary facts.
• Deal in specifics instead of generalities.
• Use simple, clear and precise language.
• Tell the difference between baloney and substance.
• Set priorities in terms of importance in order to properly organize the facts.
• Exercise judgment in pondering the hows, the whys and the “so whats” of a story.
If you grew up reading newspapers, and could ape their writing style, you taught yourself a lot of these skills. If you grow up Tweeting and texting and throwing up blurbs on Facebook, you might never learn any of it. One effect of that is you’ll lack the ability to think critically and you’ll be an easy mark for corporate and political marketing in this age of hype, infomercials, advertorials, secret sponsorships, product placements, public places named for big companies and vending machines in the schools.
I’m getting so cranky I think there may be a plot at work to achieve that effect. One little clue as an example: the media no longer refers to the Democratic Caucus in the House; it refers to the Democrat Caucus, with the word “Democrat” sort of spat in contempt when spoken. Who masterminded that weird shift in political correctness? It sure wasn’t the heirs of Strunk or White. I bet it was Karl Rove … and our noble independent media went right along with him.
Schools should be trying to counteract the aspects of our culture that degrade expository writing skills and therefore basic common-sense thinking skills. It would be a great idea for high schools to make freshmen learn how to write a good news story. It could be fun. It could save the country.
On self-publishing a novel and, I hope, moving on
I’m about at the end of the one-year period I promised myself for pushing a novel I was forced to self-publish because editors and agents all said its sales potential was too small. An e-book since 2010, but much revised since then, it came out in paperback a year ago in March. That's when I started the one-year clock.
The agents and editors were right. It has garnered a fair amount of attention for an “Indie” book, the new term for what used to be called a vanity book, but its sales have been very small indeed — about 800 in 2012. (A lot better than the 20 or so for my previous self-published book so I'll take it.)
As I write, I’m scheduled to give a talk on the book at the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton and I am prepared for three people to be in the audience for this valedictory performance, including my long-suffering wife.
It was a fun ride.
For a while, I was regularly getting email alerts from Google that posts about the book (the title of which I will not mention here to feebly deflect the charge of self-promotion) had appeared here and there on the web, including an amorous blog devoted to all things Jefferson (Thomas, we’re talking here, though I think many of its users really had crushes on Stephan Dillane’s Jefferson in the HBO series “John Adams”) on which a love-struck reader asked if anyone else had read the book and that she was sorry she had finished it because she wanted it to go on and on.
There were random Tweets about it, too, including one from a college professor in Kentucky who said the book had taken over her soul and asking when would the movie come out. Yikes!
Various libraries acquired it. At the Urbana Library in Illinois, the staff included it on their list of top books for 2012.
How many self-published writers see that kind of response? I'm very grateful that a fair number of people out there liked this book and, I hope, will remember it.
But most gratifying was its acquisition by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation for its beautiful library just down the hill from Monticello. Even if the book merely sits on a shelf there, it amazes me to think that my incarnation of the man has found a place on his mountain.
The book, unlike many, had its chances to take off. There were sparks out there, all right, but they never started a fire, which I admit disappointed me. I really thought this one was going to make it — not in a blockbuster way but in a nice 5,000-annual-sale way for a year or two — and that I really had to force myself into the promotion mode to help make that happen and give the book its chance.
A final few words about all this: After all my years of writing professionally as a newspaperman, it was an experience to have my work reviewed rather than merely attacked in letters to the editor, which is really about politics, of course, not writing.
I fully accept the review process, which has evolved dramatically with the Internet. Everyone can now alert thousands or even millions of potential readers that they hated a book. Scary.
I understand that not every book will work for every reader no matter how “good” it is and that a writer must face judgment if he or she chooses to publish. But I’m still not quite used to it and I’m still stupidly smoldering about one review in particular, which was posted all over the internet and, I suspect, was motivated by something other than an honest and fair reading of the book.
It wasn’t all that bad a review, actually, and I'm a jerk to even think about it.
Overall, the reviews were very positive, 23 of them with an average rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon (very few, 5 I think, were from people I know) and 44 with an average of 3.93 among fussier Goodreads members, for whom a “3” is supposed to mean they liked it.
There have been lots of 5’s and 4’s but the average was dragged down by a lot of 3’s and, horrors, a couple of 2’s among readers who just did not get it. They wanted hot sex, car chases and vampires, I self-righteously think.
See how nuts I am, still parsing all this? I need another book to work on, I know. I’m trying to make that happen.
I’d like to thank friends and family for putting up with me during this time, especially the many who allowed me to harangue them into attending my talks and buying the book, especially those who packed the house at Canio’s last summer. That was fun, though I am slightly abashed I really did such a thing.
I had a good talk on Shelter Island, too, where a small but enthusiastic crowd turned out at the library, including Patricia Shillingburg, an Islander who has been in the news often over the years for her work on the Deer and Tick Committee, the Appeals Board and the 350th Anniversary Committee.
She gave me a rare chance to deliver a line that allowed me to make people laugh and, for a moment, consider myself a very clever fellow.
Speaking from the audience, she declared she loved the book and that it even had made her cry at the end.
“Well Patricia!” I said. “I think by the time you get to the end of everything I’ve ever written in the Reporter, you’re in tears.”
Guess you had to be there.
The agents and editors were right. It has garnered a fair amount of attention for an “Indie” book, the new term for what used to be called a vanity book, but its sales have been very small indeed — about 800 in 2012. (A lot better than the 20 or so for my previous self-published book so I'll take it.)
As I write, I’m scheduled to give a talk on the book at the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton and I am prepared for three people to be in the audience for this valedictory performance, including my long-suffering wife.
It was a fun ride.
For a while, I was regularly getting email alerts from Google that posts about the book (the title of which I will not mention here to feebly deflect the charge of self-promotion) had appeared here and there on the web, including an amorous blog devoted to all things Jefferson (Thomas, we’re talking here, though I think many of its users really had crushes on Stephan Dillane’s Jefferson in the HBO series “John Adams”) on which a love-struck reader asked if anyone else had read the book and that she was sorry she had finished it because she wanted it to go on and on.
There were random Tweets about it, too, including one from a college professor in Kentucky who said the book had taken over her soul and asking when would the movie come out. Yikes!
Various libraries acquired it. At the Urbana Library in Illinois, the staff included it on their list of top books for 2012.
How many self-published writers see that kind of response? I'm very grateful that a fair number of people out there liked this book and, I hope, will remember it.
But most gratifying was its acquisition by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation for its beautiful library just down the hill from Monticello. Even if the book merely sits on a shelf there, it amazes me to think that my incarnation of the man has found a place on his mountain.
The book, unlike many, had its chances to take off. There were sparks out there, all right, but they never started a fire, which I admit disappointed me. I really thought this one was going to make it — not in a blockbuster way but in a nice 5,000-annual-sale way for a year or two — and that I really had to force myself into the promotion mode to help make that happen and give the book its chance.
A final few words about all this: After all my years of writing professionally as a newspaperman, it was an experience to have my work reviewed rather than merely attacked in letters to the editor, which is really about politics, of course, not writing.
I fully accept the review process, which has evolved dramatically with the Internet. Everyone can now alert thousands or even millions of potential readers that they hated a book. Scary.
I understand that not every book will work for every reader no matter how “good” it is and that a writer must face judgment if he or she chooses to publish. But I’m still not quite used to it and I’m still stupidly smoldering about one review in particular, which was posted all over the internet and, I suspect, was motivated by something other than an honest and fair reading of the book.
It wasn’t all that bad a review, actually, and I'm a jerk to even think about it.
Overall, the reviews were very positive, 23 of them with an average rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon (very few, 5 I think, were from people I know) and 44 with an average of 3.93 among fussier Goodreads members, for whom a “3” is supposed to mean they liked it.
There have been lots of 5’s and 4’s but the average was dragged down by a lot of 3’s and, horrors, a couple of 2’s among readers who just did not get it. They wanted hot sex, car chases and vampires, I self-righteously think.
See how nuts I am, still parsing all this? I need another book to work on, I know. I’m trying to make that happen.
I’d like to thank friends and family for putting up with me during this time, especially the many who allowed me to harangue them into attending my talks and buying the book, especially those who packed the house at Canio’s last summer. That was fun, though I am slightly abashed I really did such a thing.
I had a good talk on Shelter Island, too, where a small but enthusiastic crowd turned out at the library, including Patricia Shillingburg, an Islander who has been in the news often over the years for her work on the Deer and Tick Committee, the Appeals Board and the 350th Anniversary Committee.
She gave me a rare chance to deliver a line that allowed me to make people laugh and, for a moment, consider myself a very clever fellow.
Speaking from the audience, she declared she loved the book and that it even had made her cry at the end.
“Well Patricia!” I said. “I think by the time you get to the end of everything I’ve ever written in the Reporter, you’re in tears.”
Guess you had to be there.
Obsession
Can you imagine the kind of focus and intensity required to write a novel like Elizabeth Gilbert's "The Signature of All Things" or Donna Tartt's "Goldfinch"?
I just finished reading Gilbert's book. It was a masterpiece. I will soon read Tartt's ... my wife just finished it. She loved it.
I suspect these two authors had to be obsessed by their chosen topics ... even possessed ... for quite some time in order to write their books. And perhaps obsessed (if not possessed) long after.
It's not normal behavior, is it? All those millions who drive to work each day, sit at their keyboards, hold meetings, stand around in the hall, and go home at night ... Do they focus that intensely on anything?
Perhaps they are obsessed with something ... making money, fending off a competitor, their suspicion that their spouse is wandering or their kid is peddling drugs.
But a fantasy world? What kind of people obsess about a world they make up in their own heads? If they're older than 12, the answer is crazy people ... and writers, from novelists to historians.
I include historians because they are living in a fantasy world too, even though it is based on the facts they have gathered about real people and actual events. To write her fabulous, award-winning book "The Hemingses of Monticello," for example, can you imagine how deeply Annette Gordon-Reed must have dived into the world of Thomas Jefferson and the Hemings family, as she understood (and therefore imagined) it to have been?
I did it myself, very joyfully if perhaps less competently than AGR, when I was researching and then writing "Thomas Jefferson, Rachel & Me," my realistic fantasy about TJ having to make it in the 21st century. I did it through the long process of revising and polishing the mss. And I'm still doing it, I'm afraid, as I keep pushing for the book to be noticed.
I just cannot believe TJRM won't find its audience. I say so publicly even though I realize the chances are that, down the road, I'll just look like a fool.
And there's the problem for a writer: how and when do you extract yourself from your fantasy world?
For me, I think the time (after more than three years of writing, revising and marketing) has come. In fact, it's overdue.
But when little things keep happening every now and then to renew hope -- another great review, an inquiry from a big agency about film rights, a Tweet from a besotted reader -- it becomes very hard to turn off the focus and intensity that were required to create the book and get it out there.
Quitting was easy with my previous novel, which I delusionally believed could find a market. It is not a fun book, as good as it is. Few were interested. And after a matter of months, I got over it. In fact, I really did not want to think about its subject matter any more. It was a relief to put it behind me.
As for the TJ book, I'm ready ... even though I am not tired of it. I'm still amazed I wrote it.
For a writer in this predicament, I think the only answer lies in find something new on which to obsess.
Trying!
I just finished reading Gilbert's book. It was a masterpiece. I will soon read Tartt's ... my wife just finished it. She loved it.
I suspect these two authors had to be obsessed by their chosen topics ... even possessed ... for quite some time in order to write their books. And perhaps obsessed (if not possessed) long after.
It's not normal behavior, is it? All those millions who drive to work each day, sit at their keyboards, hold meetings, stand around in the hall, and go home at night ... Do they focus that intensely on anything?
Perhaps they are obsessed with something ... making money, fending off a competitor, their suspicion that their spouse is wandering or their kid is peddling drugs.
But a fantasy world? What kind of people obsess about a world they make up in their own heads? If they're older than 12, the answer is crazy people ... and writers, from novelists to historians.
I include historians because they are living in a fantasy world too, even though it is based on the facts they have gathered about real people and actual events. To write her fabulous, award-winning book "The Hemingses of Monticello," for example, can you imagine how deeply Annette Gordon-Reed must have dived into the world of Thomas Jefferson and the Hemings family, as she understood (and therefore imagined) it to have been?
I did it myself, very joyfully if perhaps less competently than AGR, when I was researching and then writing "Thomas Jefferson, Rachel & Me," my realistic fantasy about TJ having to make it in the 21st century. I did it through the long process of revising and polishing the mss. And I'm still doing it, I'm afraid, as I keep pushing for the book to be noticed.
I just cannot believe TJRM won't find its audience. I say so publicly even though I realize the chances are that, down the road, I'll just look like a fool.
And there's the problem for a writer: how and when do you extract yourself from your fantasy world?
For me, I think the time (after more than three years of writing, revising and marketing) has come. In fact, it's overdue.
But when little things keep happening every now and then to renew hope -- another great review, an inquiry from a big agency about film rights, a Tweet from a besotted reader -- it becomes very hard to turn off the focus and intensity that were required to create the book and get it out there.
Quitting was easy with my previous novel, which I delusionally believed could find a market. It is not a fun book, as good as it is. Few were interested. And after a matter of months, I got over it. In fact, I really did not want to think about its subject matter any more. It was a relief to put it behind me.
As for the TJ book, I'm ready ... even though I am not tired of it. I'm still amazed I wrote it.
For a writer in this predicament, I think the only answer lies in find something new on which to obsess.
Trying!
Indie drivel: the madness of review results so far ....
Here's a status report for anyone interested in the trials of self-publishing in this new age of empowerment for us crazies:
This has been like making one more cast or two into striper waters before calling it a day (I always stayed, in my striper days, until my arm hurt):
Hoping to resuscitate sales as this novel fades into the sunset, I sent out a query in October to about 20 Amazon reviewers (thru a service that found them) asking if they'd consider reading TJRM. Eight said they would.
I also scheduled a paperback giveaway thru Goodreads, which drew more than 625 contestants, most of whom also marked the book as a "To Read" on their shelves.
Fifteen won a copy; I mailed them out last week.
What did I get so far for these efforts?
Sales have never been so bad. One Kindle copy this month, no Nooks, paperbacks or Smashwords. In fact, I just "unpublished" the Nook and Smashwords editions so I can stop checking those sites. Not worth the effort.
As for reviewers, there have been:
• Two five-star ratings, one from a top 500 Amazon "vine" reviewer who wrote a sharp review that emphasized the racial aspects of the novel; (** -- see update at bottom)
• A 4-star rating from a guy who liked it a lot but dismissively detected "a tear jerker" ending;
• A 3-star from a Floridian who said he had expected more comedy so felt the book "missed" but thought the history elements were well handled;
• And a 2-star from a Indie writer Texan who really seems to have been loaded for bear when he took up this book and — while saying the dialogue was "right on for the period" — blasted it for errors, bad writing and ridiculousness. (One of the 5-star people specifically praised the writing and even what he called the editing ... Hey. Why does this paradox still surprise me? It has been going on since I published the first Kindle edition.)
That's an average so far of 3.8 -- which is just below its Goodreads average of 3.90 after 69 ratings.
And thanks to the Texan and the guy who wanted comedy, its Amazon rating is down from 4.5 to 4.4 after 34 reviews.
I note that a lot of literary works, including great ones, have ratings like this and a similar rating array ... mostly 4's and 5's, but a lot of 3's and a certain percentage of 2's and even 1's. Huckleberry Finn, one of the greatest of great American novels despite its flawed, rushed ending, is a 3.77 on Goodreads, with more than 1,000 ratings of 1. Good grief. They are probably not people I'd like to have dinner with.
Well, I dread the potential reviews still likely to come in over the next couple of months from the reviewers and readers who have not yet chimed in. *
But I hope against hope their ratings will beat the odds and the clear pattern that now seems set in stone: My little masterpiece, such as it is, will never been recognized by a wide audience. For all its apparent simplicity, it's too complicated. So it's no wonder that no reviewer has hit the nail on the head in a way that ties together the personal and the national issues raised by the story's elements.
The many readers who want pot-boilers and genre fiction won't like it.
That film rights query last summer from the big Beverly Hills agency sure made it hard to get over my hopes, even though I've heard nothing since.
And hey -- one very nice thing: The Hennepin County Library in Minneapolis and its suburbs says on its website that it has 3 copies of TJRM on order. Nice! How did they even know it existed? And why 3 copies? (And why don't I see any order for 3 copies on the book's Createspace dashboard?)
Arghhh. I'd much prefer to be working on a new book than thinking about these pointless things.
* One came in yesterday from Jim M on Goodreads, another reviewer whom I solicited. Five stars, I am delighted to report. Says he couldn't put it down. "Great book," can't wait to visit Monticello again. So how come the book works so well for readers like him and evokes such contempt from a few others? if it WERE badly written, I'd get it. There are a lot of badly written books that get by on story line alone. But as an old editor, I know it's not badly written. I really wonder if it has to do with politics in at least some of these cases even though these reviewers blast the writing. They think it's a liberal screed which it is not.
** A 4-star came in Nov . 30 with a fascinating review and it looks like a 5-star came in Dec. 1 but it has not yet propagated to a place where I can read it. Goodreads is like that. (And since then another 5 and a 4 from people I did not solicit for a review or who did not win a free copy.)
This has been like making one more cast or two into striper waters before calling it a day (I always stayed, in my striper days, until my arm hurt):
Hoping to resuscitate sales as this novel fades into the sunset, I sent out a query in October to about 20 Amazon reviewers (thru a service that found them) asking if they'd consider reading TJRM. Eight said they would.
I also scheduled a paperback giveaway thru Goodreads, which drew more than 625 contestants, most of whom also marked the book as a "To Read" on their shelves.
Fifteen won a copy; I mailed them out last week.
What did I get so far for these efforts?
Sales have never been so bad. One Kindle copy this month, no Nooks, paperbacks or Smashwords. In fact, I just "unpublished" the Nook and Smashwords editions so I can stop checking those sites. Not worth the effort.
As for reviewers, there have been:
• Two five-star ratings, one from a top 500 Amazon "vine" reviewer who wrote a sharp review that emphasized the racial aspects of the novel; (** -- see update at bottom)
• A 4-star rating from a guy who liked it a lot but dismissively detected "a tear jerker" ending;
• A 3-star from a Floridian who said he had expected more comedy so felt the book "missed" but thought the history elements were well handled;
• And a 2-star from a Indie writer Texan who really seems to have been loaded for bear when he took up this book and — while saying the dialogue was "right on for the period" — blasted it for errors, bad writing and ridiculousness. (One of the 5-star people specifically praised the writing and even what he called the editing ... Hey. Why does this paradox still surprise me? It has been going on since I published the first Kindle edition.)
That's an average so far of 3.8 -- which is just below its Goodreads average of 3.90 after 69 ratings.
And thanks to the Texan and the guy who wanted comedy, its Amazon rating is down from 4.5 to 4.4 after 34 reviews.
I note that a lot of literary works, including great ones, have ratings like this and a similar rating array ... mostly 4's and 5's, but a lot of 3's and a certain percentage of 2's and even 1's. Huckleberry Finn, one of the greatest of great American novels despite its flawed, rushed ending, is a 3.77 on Goodreads, with more than 1,000 ratings of 1. Good grief. They are probably not people I'd like to have dinner with.
Well, I dread the potential reviews still likely to come in over the next couple of months from the reviewers and readers who have not yet chimed in. *
But I hope against hope their ratings will beat the odds and the clear pattern that now seems set in stone: My little masterpiece, such as it is, will never been recognized by a wide audience. For all its apparent simplicity, it's too complicated. So it's no wonder that no reviewer has hit the nail on the head in a way that ties together the personal and the national issues raised by the story's elements.
The many readers who want pot-boilers and genre fiction won't like it.
That film rights query last summer from the big Beverly Hills agency sure made it hard to get over my hopes, even though I've heard nothing since.
And hey -- one very nice thing: The Hennepin County Library in Minneapolis and its suburbs says on its website that it has 3 copies of TJRM on order. Nice! How did they even know it existed? And why 3 copies? (And why don't I see any order for 3 copies on the book's Createspace dashboard?)
Arghhh. I'd much prefer to be working on a new book than thinking about these pointless things.
* One came in yesterday from Jim M on Goodreads, another reviewer whom I solicited. Five stars, I am delighted to report. Says he couldn't put it down. "Great book," can't wait to visit Monticello again. So how come the book works so well for readers like him and evokes such contempt from a few others? if it WERE badly written, I'd get it. There are a lot of badly written books that get by on story line alone. But as an old editor, I know it's not badly written. I really wonder if it has to do with politics in at least some of these cases even though these reviewers blast the writing. They think it's a liberal screed which it is not.
** A 4-star came in Nov . 30 with a fascinating review and it looks like a 5-star came in Dec. 1 but it has not yet propagated to a place where I can read it. Goodreads is like that. (And since then another 5 and a 4 from people I did not solicit for a review or who did not win a free copy.)
Inside Out: a not-so-smalltown editor's life
Bits and pieces from my newspaper column as well as some riffs on the horrors of novel writing and trying to get one's work the attention it deserves.
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