How This Critter Crits
Viewing comments for Chapter 15 "The How of Rejection"GROWTH? ADULATION? HURRY -- CHOOSE!
53 total reviews
Comment from --Turtle.
You have a very good blog voice. I enjoy reading the thoughts as they meander across different aspects of ... thinking. For the first section: The topic for the comparison of then and now with rejection, being time and effort, I wonder if that just makes more of a community of rejected, as it's so much easier to get rejected because it's so much faster and easier to send off thoughts to the wind to be rejected. Or found.
While he is waiting for his turn(,) he strikes up a conversation with a sixteen-year-
(suggestion only, for introductory element)
old lad, (who is)? also down on his luck[,] and waiting for a haircut.
(I felt the comma here interrupts the this and that)
About their psyches. About the subtle deeper layers, then and now.
(good use of incomplete thoughts for emphasis, well used and effective in controlling the pace of the reader's experiencing of the thoughts)
The electronic age--how apt is that?
(Pen and paper, so inconvenient... and yet, I can't do anything useful on my kindle fire save for read and watch movies... and corrupt my little one with addictive Eye-hand coordinating exercises that will probably lead to teen pregnancy or drugs or who knows. Here's a stick, kid... play with the stick. No... don't eat the stick... . sigh. How about sidewalk chalk? ok, your going to eat that too.
Sorry, I'm going to focus. Great stable entrance into this blog thought. What you do well, always, is present an entertaining voice that really holds a reader in place, no matter the topic. I tend to see a worm on a line, dangled before me, and before I know it, I'm involved and engaged in the work. Many times your topics are both universally simple and yet complicated. The pace you engage in is tricky, because it deceives with the simple, then gradually immerses the brain into more thinking.
if that meant tossing an otherwise perfectly good page because in the last line he wrote to instead of too .(..?)
So be it! Effort. Time.
(I like the effect of new line, emphasized point, but the period at the end of the if/ then statement was jarring to me, jarring incomplete, would have liked more transition, maybe just the elipse to grant the pause while recognizing the thought was incomplete)
up on-line(online?), pastes or attaches the Ms, pushes the submit button, and voila!, he is
We were oh so ready(oh-so-ready?) to begin our suffering.
How much better was he equipped to be a poet?
(This section I just read in the sense of a voyeur, sneeking a peak at the moment of life you left playing in a window for any passerbys to get a chance to see. I liked it, and I found it fascinating. (It's hard to get gravel in your voice when you haven't been churned through the rough edges of life.)
his experiences in his generation are immediate{,} and unique.
(Sometimes, I notice your choice to add a comma on 'and's like this. I pause to wonder if making the second term an afterthought was needed here and there)
By the end of this work, I was starting to drown myself in the vastness of everyone, and I had many thoughts of all the works around me, the cacophony of the entire human race, each moment in time this weird culmination of a continuation with eras of bending this way or that, and I bounce back between the comfort of being nothing noticed, nothing significant, to being the drop of water in a raging river recognizing I'm just swept up with the rest and the loss of importance as an individual being discombobulating.
As always, I offer my thoughts as I read, but this was read as entertainment.
-Turtle.
reply by the author on 20-Aug-2015
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You have a very good blog voice. I enjoy reading the thoughts as they meander across different aspects of ... thinking. For the first section: The topic for the comparison of then and now with rejection, being time and effort, I wonder if that just makes more of a community of rejected, as it's so much easier to get rejected because it's so much faster and easier to send off thoughts to the wind to be rejected. Or found.
While he is waiting for his turn(,) he strikes up a conversation with a sixteen-year-
(suggestion only, for introductory element)
old lad, (who is)? also down on his luck[,] and waiting for a haircut.
(I felt the comma here interrupts the this and that)
About their psyches. About the subtle deeper layers, then and now.
(good use of incomplete thoughts for emphasis, well used and effective in controlling the pace of the reader's experiencing of the thoughts)
The electronic age--how apt is that?
(Pen and paper, so inconvenient... and yet, I can't do anything useful on my kindle fire save for read and watch movies... and corrupt my little one with addictive Eye-hand coordinating exercises that will probably lead to teen pregnancy or drugs or who knows. Here's a stick, kid... play with the stick. No... don't eat the stick... . sigh. How about sidewalk chalk? ok, your going to eat that too.
Sorry, I'm going to focus. Great stable entrance into this blog thought. What you do well, always, is present an entertaining voice that really holds a reader in place, no matter the topic. I tend to see a worm on a line, dangled before me, and before I know it, I'm involved and engaged in the work. Many times your topics are both universally simple and yet complicated. The pace you engage in is tricky, because it deceives with the simple, then gradually immerses the brain into more thinking.
if that meant tossing an otherwise perfectly good page because in the last line he wrote to instead of too .(..?)
So be it! Effort. Time.
(I like the effect of new line, emphasized point, but the period at the end of the if/ then statement was jarring to me, jarring incomplete, would have liked more transition, maybe just the elipse to grant the pause while recognizing the thought was incomplete)
up on-line(online?), pastes or attaches the Ms, pushes the submit button, and voila!, he is
We were oh so ready(oh-so-ready?) to begin our suffering.
How much better was he equipped to be a poet?
(This section I just read in the sense of a voyeur, sneeking a peak at the moment of life you left playing in a window for any passerbys to get a chance to see. I liked it, and I found it fascinating. (It's hard to get gravel in your voice when you haven't been churned through the rough edges of life.)
his experiences in his generation are immediate{,} and unique.
(Sometimes, I notice your choice to add a comma on 'and's like this. I pause to wonder if making the second term an afterthought was needed here and there)
By the end of this work, I was starting to drown myself in the vastness of everyone, and I had many thoughts of all the works around me, the cacophony of the entire human race, each moment in time this weird culmination of a continuation with eras of bending this way or that, and I bounce back between the comfort of being nothing noticed, nothing significant, to being the drop of water in a raging river recognizing I'm just swept up with the rest and the loss of importance as an individual being discombobulating.
As always, I offer my thoughts as I read, but this was read as entertainment.
-Turtle.
Comment Written 20-Aug-2015
reply by the author on 20-Aug-2015
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Sorry, I'm going to focus. [Those little asides are what make me cherish your crits.
So be it! Effort. Time. [You must have downloaded this some time ago and are just now critting it. That line has been changed in the edited version. I brought "so be it" up to the next line.
(It's hard to get gravel in your voice when you haven't been churned through the rough edges of life.) OMG! May I have that!
I read your last paragraph beginning with, "By the end of this work," and was thinking to myself, I don't remember writing that, but it's brilliant!"
Turtle! You are a great person and critic!
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Aww, I'm just too emotional today, and you are too kind. In my overwhelmed state I totally forgot to add my parenthesis.
Comment from Margaret Snowdon
So good to find a post from you, Jay. Such an interesting, absorbing read - ah, San Fransisco! Like you, I had a secure homelife, but married at eighteen with nothing in my purse but a good luck charm until the end of the month - and boy, did my suffering start, but in a very different way that took me 12 years to escape from.
The strangest thing with my rejection letters, they were so nicely put - sigh.
But for his finished Ms he needed perfection (back in an age without white-out or correcto-tape) and if that meant tossing an otherwise perfectly good page because in the last line he wrote to instead of too(,THEN SO BE IT!)
So be it! Effort. Time. - Jay, I've read the above thru several times and the way you've worded the sentence, surely needs "So be it" added on the end.
Margaret
reply by the author on 20-Aug-2015
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So good to find a post from you, Jay. Such an interesting, absorbing read - ah, San Fransisco! Like you, I had a secure homelife, but married at eighteen with nothing in my purse but a good luck charm until the end of the month - and boy, did my suffering start, but in a very different way that took me 12 years to escape from.
The strangest thing with my rejection letters, they were so nicely put - sigh.
But for his finished Ms he needed perfection (back in an age without white-out or correcto-tape) and if that meant tossing an otherwise perfectly good page because in the last line he wrote to instead of too(,THEN SO BE IT!)
So be it! Effort. Time. - Jay, I've read the above thru several times and the way you've worded the sentence, surely needs "So be it" added on the end.
Margaret
Comment Written 20-Aug-2015
reply by the author on 20-Aug-2015
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Love the sixes, Margaret. Abundant thanks! When you are right you are so, so right. I brought up the "so be it" to the previous line. I see I didn't add the "then". I'll go back and re-read it. Once again, you are so valuable an asset.
Comment from c_lucas
In pre-publishing days, the poet/writer would send his work to an agent. Now the poet/writer is involved in most of the marketing of his work. This is very well written. Good job.
reply by the author on 20-Aug-2015
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In pre-publishing days, the poet/writer would send his work to an agent. Now the poet/writer is involved in most of the marketing of his work. This is very well written. Good job.
Comment Written 20-Aug-2015
reply by the author on 20-Aug-2015
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Thank you, Charlie. I appreciate your plaudits.
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You're welcome, Jay. Charlie
Comment from Halfree
Some very good prose here. Like the article (or whatever) Masterful in presentation and content. So what else can I say. I read a lot of FS posting, review some. I grow tired of the "harrow" stories with no depth...series of descriptions that are pretty useless. Anyway, I diverse; thought this was well structured and very readable; also thought provoking'
Enjoyed....thanks.
reply by the author on 20-Aug-2015
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Some very good prose here. Like the article (or whatever) Masterful in presentation and content. So what else can I say. I read a lot of FS posting, review some. I grow tired of the "harrow" stories with no depth...series of descriptions that are pretty useless. Anyway, I diverse; thought this was well structured and very readable; also thought provoking'
Enjoyed....thanks.
Comment Written 20-Aug-2015
reply by the author on 20-Aug-2015
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Halfree, thank you for your kind words and your genuinely appreciated gift of a six! Glad you enjoyed it.
Comment from ellie6
A wonderful journey throught the '60's, I can identify with leaving home and surviving on tinned beans. It's interesting how a deprived life engenders good poetry and prose - not that I was deprived in any way, like you I was the product of a stable home. It is only when one leaves the security of hearth and home do we start the real adventure of living.
reply by the author on 20-Aug-2015
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A wonderful journey throught the '60's, I can identify with leaving home and surviving on tinned beans. It's interesting how a deprived life engenders good poetry and prose - not that I was deprived in any way, like you I was the product of a stable home. It is only when one leaves the security of hearth and home do we start the real adventure of living.
Comment Written 20-Aug-2015
reply by the author on 20-Aug-2015
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Thank you, Ellie. You are so kind with your rating and genuine with your words. True, everything starts when we leave home. Unless we are like Emily Dickinson. I'm sure there were others.
Comment from padumachitta
Hey. I am back for a mo...and dropped by your newest...
the six is for the last part...we are only our views...our minds make our world...I believe everything we write is autobiographical...even our fiction, for it is sifted through our memories, expereinces and world view...
hey ho...
and well, i use to paper my bathroom walls with rejection slips...how i hate the computer age...no response means rejection, but no piece of paper to hang on to...
padumachitta
reply by the author on 20-Aug-2015
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Hey. I am back for a mo...and dropped by your newest...
the six is for the last part...we are only our views...our minds make our world...I believe everything we write is autobiographical...even our fiction, for it is sifted through our memories, expereinces and world view...
hey ho...
and well, i use to paper my bathroom walls with rejection slips...how i hate the computer age...no response means rejection, but no piece of paper to hang on to...
padumachitta
Comment Written 20-Aug-2015
reply by the author on 20-Aug-2015
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Bless you for the six, Padumachitta! And for the continuing the dialogue with your thoughts--which I respect! It's been a while since I've sent anything out. Gonna have to start getting a fresh dose of rejection.
Comment from Chris Tee
This write was totally absorbing and interesting and the eras mentioned also had influential and sometimes intimidating reactions in people. I enjoyed this read tremendously and salute you!
reply by the author on 20-Aug-2015
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This write was totally absorbing and interesting and the eras mentioned also had influential and sometimes intimidating reactions in people. I enjoyed this read tremendously and salute you!
Comment Written 20-Aug-2015
reply by the author on 20-Aug-2015
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Ah, thank you, Chris. You're starting to be a regular around my posts. Don't think I don't appreciate it!
Comment from Eigle Rull
This was a very well written post, my friend. It was interesting in that you brought up the past and moved to the present and the future also. It held my attention because I enjoyed it very much. It is a post that brings thought to the reader. Best wishes, my friend.
Always with respect,
reply by the author on 20-Aug-2015
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This was a very well written post, my friend. It was interesting in that you brought up the past and moved to the present and the future also. It held my attention because I enjoyed it very much. It is a post that brings thought to the reader. Best wishes, my friend.
Always with respect,
Comment Written 20-Aug-2015
reply by the author on 20-Aug-2015
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Many thanks, Elgie. I'm waiting for the next session of "How to survive in the wilderness." I appreciate your crits so much.
Comment from mfowler
I couldn't help but feel how great that last quote was. Within it, so many truths, and phrases which have inspired songwriters, writers and film-makers ever since:No man is an island,for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. This of course connects beautifully to the comments you make about art and our place in the historical rhythms of the past. I've always contended that there is little original left in this world to create and that creativity is the reblending of all that has come before. What makes it original is the order in which it is created anew.
This whole article has me struggling to distil an intelligent review as I followed your discussion down the page. I got caught up in the details and observations and sort of lost the thread. The first section deals with the time at which you get rejected. You postulate that rejection back in the day was very difficult due to the technological limitations and the time it took to submit something perfect. The modern writer is at a big advantage with such great computer based technology to shorten every aspect of the process. I guess he gets to write more and be rejected more often. Your second half deals with suffering for the art and you offer your friend Joe as a man who had the sort of crappy background that might produce sufficient angst that he'd be good. You lament at your own middle class whitebread beginnings and suggest they may hold you back. It was an interesting inside into what may make a good writer. I really loved your discussion about the beat generation and its affinity with the Romantic era. That really made good sense and you can probably also draw parallels between the arts and politics, ideas, technological change, religion etc during the time. I only recently discovered Ferlinghetti myself. I read two of his pieces and went,'Wow!'. I tried to mimic but that failed miserably. Way too whitebread!
Glad to see you suffered for your art and I can probably now understand what a long journey it's been for you as a writer. Luckily, I only started writing creatively two years ago so I know I won't have to suffer too long trying to be any good. I just won't aim that high.
Thanks again for your unique slant on life and writing. The two are inextricably connected.
reply by the author on 20-Aug-2015
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I couldn't help but feel how great that last quote was. Within it, so many truths, and phrases which have inspired songwriters, writers and film-makers ever since:No man is an island,for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. This of course connects beautifully to the comments you make about art and our place in the historical rhythms of the past. I've always contended that there is little original left in this world to create and that creativity is the reblending of all that has come before. What makes it original is the order in which it is created anew.
This whole article has me struggling to distil an intelligent review as I followed your discussion down the page. I got caught up in the details and observations and sort of lost the thread. The first section deals with the time at which you get rejected. You postulate that rejection back in the day was very difficult due to the technological limitations and the time it took to submit something perfect. The modern writer is at a big advantage with such great computer based technology to shorten every aspect of the process. I guess he gets to write more and be rejected more often. Your second half deals with suffering for the art and you offer your friend Joe as a man who had the sort of crappy background that might produce sufficient angst that he'd be good. You lament at your own middle class whitebread beginnings and suggest they may hold you back. It was an interesting inside into what may make a good writer. I really loved your discussion about the beat generation and its affinity with the Romantic era. That really made good sense and you can probably also draw parallels between the arts and politics, ideas, technological change, religion etc during the time. I only recently discovered Ferlinghetti myself. I read two of his pieces and went,'Wow!'. I tried to mimic but that failed miserably. Way too whitebread!
Glad to see you suffered for your art and I can probably now understand what a long journey it's been for you as a writer. Luckily, I only started writing creatively two years ago so I know I won't have to suffer too long trying to be any good. I just won't aim that high.
Thanks again for your unique slant on life and writing. The two are inextricably connected.
Comment Written 20-Aug-2015
reply by the author on 20-Aug-2015
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Thank you for reading at your usual depth, coming to the surface to comment. I think there is less connectivity between part one and part two than I'd have liked. They were posted at different times and only combined because an 800 word post is difficult for me to justify all the advance work of critting to get the bucks to promote. So, we'll call it selfishness. Combined they were the right length--no matter one was about boiled Brussels-Sprouts and the other Cricket. Thanks again for your lovely 6-er.
Comment from Kareau
Ok, I'll have to be a "the glass is half full" optimist. With today's technology a writer does not need a publisher, editor most definitely, but books can easily be sold on-line individually. My local university can even has a printer that can print a book. I will say some books I have purchased on-line have words misspelled and some have not lived up to the synopsis.
I had a great upbringing too, loving parents, good home and yea I would say spoiled too. I have read a few non-fiction books in which the authors had to overcome struggles, I thought the same thing I haven't really suffered (knock on wood!) like those authors. But I do hope to write uplifting funny stories. Nice blog post, ever think of starting it up again?
reply by the author on 19-Aug-2015
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Ok, I'll have to be a "the glass is half full" optimist. With today's technology a writer does not need a publisher, editor most definitely, but books can easily be sold on-line individually. My local university can even has a printer that can print a book. I will say some books I have purchased on-line have words misspelled and some have not lived up to the synopsis.
I had a great upbringing too, loving parents, good home and yea I would say spoiled too. I have read a few non-fiction books in which the authors had to overcome struggles, I thought the same thing I haven't really suffered (knock on wood!) like those authors. But I do hope to write uplifting funny stories. Nice blog post, ever think of starting it up again?
Comment Written 19-Aug-2015
reply by the author on 19-Aug-2015
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Thanks so much for the six stars. It means a lot to me. Are you asking me if I'm going to start my blog again? It's active, but I haven't contributed anything new to it for a LONG time. I still get one to two new followers every day. But it needs an infusion of some fresh material. Again, thanks.