SaltwaterServr
Blank Paper Offends Me
- Messages
- 8,124
- Reaction score
- 1
Today was the last day of classes for my return trip to college as a non-traditional student. Because I needed to fill out my hours to go full time, and because I'm working on a novel, I took a creative writing class.
Let's suffice it to say a biology major chemistry minor is a bit out of place in the English department. Our assignments come with no hard due date, everything is debatable. I digress.
For the class, we have to turn in four pieces of fiction and three of mine were novel chapters.
After class I was talking with the professor about the last chapter I just had reviewed today by the class. He wanted to know a bit more about how my plot was going to come together because the three chapters I have turned in, there is zero common thread.
One centers around the SOS of the US, her lesbian lover, her idiot husband in the Colorado state legislature who is running for Congress in the fall, the friction she has with cabinet members in the White House, and the fact that the President is setting her up for failure to take some of the heat off of him for failed foreign policy initiative.
Another was a chapter where a Marine forward patrol base comes under fire for the first time after years of peace-keeping activities and simple drug interdictions on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The one I just had reviewed was a group of Somali pirates/mercenaries being loaded onto a ship in Vladivostok via a shipping container, killing the crew, and then releasing the 24 Russian "soldiers" inside of another container once at sea. The Russians have some critical aspect to play for one day, then they'll go back into the container, and the Somali's have instructions to lock them in until they've reached a point to dump the container overboard. One of the Russians is wearing a radiation badge, but why?
There's one other plot line running at the same time as well.
Took me about 30 minutes to spell it all out to him, including the complications down the line and the resolution.
He tells me this almost verbatim, "You've got it to become the next Clancy if you work at it. When you're done, I'll give your manuscript to my agent with my endorsement. You're close, but need to polish your style and voice some."
He mentioned that my style is very near him and Grisham, but that I need to read some of Clancy to see where my stories are needing more detail and where my dialog needs help with exposition. Of course he recommended that I take another course in basic grammar because my use of punctuation sucks goat huevos and my syntax occasionally gets way off. His final words were than I'm well ahead of the game, but it's going to be a lot of work to make it past the mid-listers "if you want to be the heir apparent."
That floored me. To even be mentioned in the same sentence as a guy who once got a $50 million dollar advance on a two book deal is, well, unreal. Pretty damned stoked, but still can't touch the book for another 8 days until finals are over.
Let's suffice it to say a biology major chemistry minor is a bit out of place in the English department. Our assignments come with no hard due date, everything is debatable. I digress.
For the class, we have to turn in four pieces of fiction and three of mine were novel chapters.
After class I was talking with the professor about the last chapter I just had reviewed today by the class. He wanted to know a bit more about how my plot was going to come together because the three chapters I have turned in, there is zero common thread.
One centers around the SOS of the US, her lesbian lover, her idiot husband in the Colorado state legislature who is running for Congress in the fall, the friction she has with cabinet members in the White House, and the fact that the President is setting her up for failure to take some of the heat off of him for failed foreign policy initiative.
Another was a chapter where a Marine forward patrol base comes under fire for the first time after years of peace-keeping activities and simple drug interdictions on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The one I just had reviewed was a group of Somali pirates/mercenaries being loaded onto a ship in Vladivostok via a shipping container, killing the crew, and then releasing the 24 Russian "soldiers" inside of another container once at sea. The Russians have some critical aspect to play for one day, then they'll go back into the container, and the Somali's have instructions to lock them in until they've reached a point to dump the container overboard. One of the Russians is wearing a radiation badge, but why?
There's one other plot line running at the same time as well.
Took me about 30 minutes to spell it all out to him, including the complications down the line and the resolution.
He tells me this almost verbatim, "You've got it to become the next Clancy if you work at it. When you're done, I'll give your manuscript to my agent with my endorsement. You're close, but need to polish your style and voice some."
He mentioned that my style is very near him and Grisham, but that I need to read some of Clancy to see where my stories are needing more detail and where my dialog needs help with exposition. Of course he recommended that I take another course in basic grammar because my use of punctuation sucks goat huevos and my syntax occasionally gets way off. His final words were than I'm well ahead of the game, but it's going to be a lot of work to make it past the mid-listers "if you want to be the heir apparent."
That floored me. To even be mentioned in the same sentence as a guy who once got a $50 million dollar advance on a two book deal is, well, unreal. Pretty damned stoked, but still can't touch the book for another 8 days until finals are over.
