Anyone want to beta my "Smile Hon" essay about the Baltimore-obsession thing?

hey, erika, I'd love to but won't have time until next week.

Perfect. It's not finished enough now anyway.

Barb said in Lit'ry:

I'm trying to finish Susan Wiggs' Just Breathe. Not sure I'm going to get there-- it was one of those cases where the book is thisclose to really going somewhere interesting and unique and the author chose the cliché, every single time.

That and the lead character is a complete waffle.

Okay, I don't understand this about publishers--hell, about readers.

There's a woman in my writers' group who writes fantastic short stories. Now, I'm incapable of short fiction; I can do short commentary or opinion, but my word meter gets tripped with fiction, and I have to go back later with the machetes and weedwhackers to find the story that's in there and trim all the shrubbery and undergrowth out. So I am sort of awed by her ability. She thinks it's no big thing.

Anyway, she was building this story--absolutely beautiful job of mounting tension, letting us get to know her main character, the circumstances of her life, the situation with the secondary characters, and the pathos of losing essentially her sole companion. I thought I knew exactly where the story was heading, and it was really, really good. She was going to bury the dog on the property. She had made a person-sized grave, square and deep, and lowered the dog into it, and then went inside. Upstairs to shower, and dress in her night clothes. Took the pills. Put the letter on the sideboard where it would be found.

...and laid down on her bed? What?

She was aghast at my aberrant mind when I told her I expected her character to arrange herself in the grave with the dog. It's where the whole story had been leading--if you followed the breadcrumb trail I did. That was never her intention, she'd never even thought of it. And her ending was so freaking ordinary and gutless, I actually wondered why she'd even bothered to write the story. I mean--not leaving the land was the entire point of the story, wasn't it?

So--my question is, I suppose, is the entire world, including publishing, so gutless as to refuse to even take a flyer at a new idea or a new concept or a new perspective? Like tv series, does everything have to be a remake or a clone? And why IS that? Who actually thinks that's a good idea?

Um. Sorry for the rant. It's One of Those Things that rankle.

So--my question is, I suppose, is the entire world, including publishing, so gutless as to refuse to even take a flyer at a new idea or a new concept or a new perspective? Like tv series, does everything have to be a remake or a clone? And why IS that? Who actually thinks that's a good idea?

I'm going to cheat and borrow a bit from a rant I had on this same subject in LJ--

Basically, I kept flashing on Bull Durham

"You're gonna have to learn your clichés. You're gonna have to study them, you're gonna have to know them. They're your friends."

There were so many places in the book I was talking about where the author hinted at turning the story on its ear and even teased us with it, then at the last minute, would inevitably pull back and rely on the cliché. The book itself is well-written, many of the characters have got intriguing aspects to them, but overall, they were pretty much drawn from Central Casting, wound up, and sent on their merry way.

So, it's a good book that so easily could have been a great book if not for the clichés. Like you, Bev, I wonder what it is about them that makes them such a constant for readers. I mean, I can see why the majority of editors would choose them-- they're safe. It's the grounding force in the category romance subgenre, after all. They have the formula for X book, they know they're going to sell, ergo, they have absolutely no reason whatsoever to deviate from that norm. Doesn't make it any less frustrating for me as a writer, but in the end, what drives this business is sales and a constant readership and so reading through this book, what I'm taking from it is that it has a few things here and there that are different... but not so much that it's going to drive the reader away. It's safe. It's familiar. It's like Pleasantville before color came into their lives.

I think, too, that publishers are willing to take a stab at something that's maybe just a tiny bit different (emo!sparkly!vampires!) but that still has the feel of the familiar. And if something succeeds, well then, they will beat that horse well into the afterlife.

Dennis Hayes, along with the late Gaylord Nelson organized the first Earth Day. (Generally Hayes is though to be a lot more responsible for Earth Day than Nelson.) Is "Denis Hayes, founder of Earth Day" a good description? Is the word "founder" Ok for something like this? Can someone "found" a festival (as opposed to an organization or family)? Also if someone can, is "founder" precise enough, or do I need to say "co-founder"?

The online references I'm seeing Typo, all refer to him as "coordinator" which to me seems to carry a fair amount of weight.

Coordinator was his official title. But I noticed almost nobody mentions the late Senator Nelson, so probably I can omit him.

I don't know if "Coordinator" conveys that he basically created Earth Day. Organizer? That is the second most commonly used term.

Would Organizer and Co-founder I think would probably cover all the bases without you needing to mention Nelson, and not be inaccurate, whereas I think if you refer to him as "founder" in the singular, you risk the argument that Senator Nelson was the one who originally brought him on board.

I don't see any reason not to use founder or "a founder."

What about "Hayes, an organizer of the first Earth Day" or "Hayes, national coordinator of the first Earth Day." It appears to be too complex to boil down into one word.

Yeah, I think that will work. Thanks, Barb and Ginger.