I'm sorry to hear this...that would be my fear. But also kind of Nelson Muntz because it isn't mine so I can point and say "Ha Ha!". Poor Deb, though.

But it's like martial arts. ita could walk into krav maga and be a solid student immediately, because she had a foundation of solid technique. I just started tai chi, and I kept falling off balance and forgetting what move I'd just been shown. The difference is that I'm starting from ignorance and ita is starting from experience.

Deb's friends are starting far enough down that they don't need her help. They need Creative Writing 101.

Hmm. I don't think I have an iota of natural skating talent, but I have learned how to skate--it just took me longer than it does more talented people. However, sports are pretty much just more complicated versions of moving your body and manipulating objects. So if you can walk, you can learn to skate, and if you can pick up an object, you can learn to swing a baseball bat--some people are just a heck of a lot better at it than others.

So maybe I am being arrogant here in thinking there are people out there who just can't write fiction. But I still think the music analogy might hold more than the sports one. And AFAIK, there really ARE people who are truly tone deaf, and therefore could never be turned into singers no matter how much they tried. I'm inclined to believe the same is true of any of the arts (I don't think I could ever learn to paint passably well, for example). But, of course I could be wrong.

Off to get groceries and go skating--back in a few hours.

I'm not saying these people can't be taught. I'm saying that they can't waltz into a high-level course, which is what Deb has to offer. They need to start in the beginner class.

There are people who are very very good at teaching beginners, and who enjoy it. Deb isn't enjoying it, by her own telling. She's happy to brush up competent work, but miserable trying to correct fundamental mistakes.

And AFAIK, there really ARE people who are truly tone deaf, and therefore could never be turned into singers no matter how much they tried.

Recent research proves this false. Nobody is tone deaf. Some people haven't been taught to listen, or learn to listen slowly. But anybody can be taught to distinguish musical tones, and to produce them him/herself. This makes me happy.

So if you can walk, you can learn to skate, and if you can pick up an object, you can learn to swing a baseball bat--some people are just a heck of a lot better at it than others.

Well, sure. But just as some people can't hit a note correctly, some people can't swing a baseball bat at all. It's a different scale of disability, true, but they're both limitations.

So I do think that some people just can't write a readable story. Some people can't even write readable sentences. But I do think that the majority of people can grasp the basics and improve through learning and practice. Whatever inner spark makes a person a good writer can also be improved with learning and practice. Even Olympic atheletes practice, after all.

See point one: no believable characters. If you have no individual real characters, how can they go on a journey? They don't exist.

Heh. Sure they can - it's just that the reader doesn't give a damn and puts the book down.

And it takes me so long to write a post, Betsy's making me look crazy. :)

Deb's friends are starting far enough down that they don't need her help. They need Creative Writing 101.

This, to me, makes me wonder how much, and how widely, they've read of other people.

You cannot write without reading, you really can't, you're just going to be clueless. My mother says that in recent years she's started being overwhelmed with students who haven't read novels that weren't assigned for classes. (Instead, what they know is movies.) And they want to start writing, and they want to be told they're brilliant, and what they produce drives her crazy.

Recent research proves this false. Nobody is tone deaf. Some people haven't been taught to listen, or learn to listen slowly. But anybody can be taught to distinguish musical tones, and to produce them him/herself. This makes me happy.

Really? I remember an NPR piece from not too long ago that was talking about people being really, truly tone deaf. It was rare, but it existed. They played tones that were very obviously different, and said that the study subjects couldn't distinguish them.

Maybe I'm being a bitch here. It's not that I don't want people to enjoy whatever turns them on, and to try to learn and improve. It's basically what I do when I skate. But I'd never presume to think I could ever dream of earning my living as a skater--my highest ambition is to compete in Adult Nationals, for the sheer joy of having made it that far. But I'm not Michelle Kwan. I'm not even Dancing Fork #3 in Beauty and the Beast On Ice. And while I have a decent amount of musical talent--a pretty good ear, a pleasant voice with a good range, an instinct for rhythm, etc.--I'm not good enough to deserve to be paid for it. The talent simply isn't there.

Well, we shall see. Their response was "Yikes! How about 1:00 tomorrow? Name the place."

Ms H, I think the person who's supposed to go on the journey in this one is the "stunningly beautiful chocolate factory worker who dreams of going to Holly wood and landing a starring role, but finds...." blah yada fishcakes.

Problem is, we don't even see her until chapter 6, and then she's alternately invisible, or a cross between something from an Archie comic circa 1958, and Sandra Dee.

I did useful things on my own behalf today, though, by way of getting the local B. Dalton's to short-order a mess of copies of "Weaver" in advance, and they were not only thrilled at my offer to sign them (made for purely selfish reasons, since autographed copies can't be returned), but will put them up front, window, big display. And tomorrow or Tuesday, I talk to Dave at our big local Borders, and set that up.

Tired now.

Liz, your mother is a wise woman, as are you. You honestly can't write unless you read.

Susan, I thought one could be tonedeaf as well, but I thought it was physical: something in either the alchemy of brain chemistry was off, or else a physical malformation - I've got tipped whatsises myself, the cochlea I think they're called, tiny little bones in the inner ear, and even thought I play a mess of instruments and sing, anything over a certain frequency range loses all semblance of harmonics to me, and becomes a deadly awful buzz.