UlyssesT [he/him]
I’ve heard of this before, my wife is very excited about it, and while I am not formally writing according to any specific guidelines to the event, I just self-published my second novel. I guess that’s progress but just thinking about the specifics of how many words the event is supposed to entail and the organizational expectations of it in general give me anxiety to think about.
I clicked the link and my anxiety got worse. I’m certain it’s encouraging and helpful to a lot of people, though.
Just about every college course I took that involved poetry also involved a teacher who hated rhyming, and for that matter hated poetry that flowed in any way that wasn’t free verse.
According to those snobs, Samuel Taylor Coleridge wasn’t a “serious” poet. I felt something when I read his work, that must mean it’s not serious.
Thank you for your reply.
I haven’t given up yet; how could I, when I have the third and final book in the trilogy nearly completed? Next time, I’ll write something one book at a time so each work can stand on its own instead of being dependent on contextual awareness of the previous books in the series.
Until that time, all I have is what I got. I challenged a lot of assumptions and delusions in the genre, went in swinging, and the algorithm did its thing.
I wrote three books doing exactly that. The third one is nearly complete.
I’m still fighting uphill against a current of Mass Effect clones and related reactionary expectations from the genres.
Whatever the reason might be, the lack of positive reviews makes the work hard to find for people who might actually like it.
Here’s a link to the book series. The first five chapters of the first book are available for free.
Primarily from two beta readers I had.
One was a religious fundamentalist that boasted that his church published a number of books he wrote already (mostly “self-help” stuff with a fundie flavor), but he also had his first sci-fi work which was painful to read because it was written from the perspective of someone that had a passing knowledge of sci-fi tropes and themes but didn’t actually want to say anything that was against his authoritarian beliefs, which were stifling enough to remove conflict altogether. He had an eccentric genius billionaire (who else) singlehandedly (of course) create an entire race of immortal near-omniscient artificial superbeings with cool neon-gridded skin that he called “Bionics” (he sort of misunderstood what that word meant and he refused to be corrected). They got to roam and play and do whatever they liked in a sealed-in paradise arcology, and when I asked the writer why these “Bionics” were made in the first place and what the corporation’s profit motives were, he piously replied “there was no profit motive!” It got worse. Apparently, the “Bionics” also wanted full legal citizenship, which is a fine starting point for a conflict in a story, except THERE WAS NO CONFLICT. No one opposed that, no one in the story, except some misguided pathetically-portrayed terrorists that got nowhere near the magic paradise arcology at any point and were just jealous about how these conspiciously-angelic beings (yep that was the plot twist, the eccentric billionaire somehow brought angels into the world and it was actually part of the divine plan all along) were better than humans in every way.
The other was a wine obsessed arrogant rich neoliberal. He was very short with me, saying he “won’t talk about my politics” as the opening line of his first beta reading feedback message, indicated how provoked he was. He also wanted that book’s protagonist to have what he called the “necessary and inevitable” shower scene, and in dressed up language complained that I didn’t talk about her naked body. She was in her late teens, so I guess not illegal, just gross for a 60something to demand out of a work where said protagonist was a child of refugees and literally lived among trash piles under the shadows of massive projects sprawl when she wasn’t borrowing a couch. He wasn’t asked to, but he took it upon myself to be the very first reviewer when that book came out and slapped three stars on it, which is actually more algorithmically-damaging than a one star in many cases, and said “I was the beta reader. Not bad for a first attempt.”
