JKR Pulls a Paolini

[epistler]

Well, at least in one important respect.

NOTE: THIS IS ABOUT ROWLING'S HORRIBLE WRITING AND NOT HER HORRIBLE OPINIONS. So let's not get side-tracked with arguments about that, okay?

Now we've got that out of the way, you may have heard that Rowling's new "Robert Galbraith" book is - to put it mildly - an embarrassing trainwreck. A couple of things jumped out at me from this article which sounded both pertinent and familiar:

If you become an extremely successful author, your publisher is less likely to care about the quality of the books you write. If everything you write is guaranteed to sell well because you have built a large audience, then the editor may be disinclined to reject a new manuscript even if it is obviously terrible. Perhaps they will try to offer some constructive suggestions. Or perhaps they will just print whatever you submit, knowing that the purpose of a for-profit publishing company is to sell as many books as possible, not to sell the best books possible.

In other words this is why Rowling was able to publish a novel that contains pages upon pages of fictitious tweets bullying her painfully obvious self-insert*, and also why Paolini was able to publish an excruciatingly long and boring mediocre Star Trek episode with Venom shoehorned in mostly in order to give his latest Sue lots of pointless superpowers.

[*Seriously, if you can make it to the end of the extracts presented in the linked review without losing the will to live you're a stronger person than I am]

I think we can take a few lessons from The Ink Black Heart: First, every writer needs a good editor who can tell them when they have produced something that shouldn’t be published, and as you become more successful and sycophants begin telling you that your farts smell like roses, it is more important than ever to have people around who can say “no.”

Indeed.

Comments

[sassyelfby]

I was shocked when I found out that the book was about being mad at literal fictional tweets making fun of her self insert. Like. There's nothing there. That does not a plot make.

Seriously. Say what you will about Paolini, but To Sleep at least told an actual story. And Paolini deliberately ignoring online criticism is a much better approach than... whatever she's doing here.

[ignoresandra]

Yeahhh. Ignoring criticism at least lets you preserve some vestiges of your dignity.

On the topic of criticism and dignity, I'm having difficulty deciding what to say in my next sporking section. It's just standard adventure book stuff in the next chapter and I'm not sure how to comment on it because it's not terrible. I also worry about my objectivity in general, so...yeah. I intend to finish the book, but still.

[sassyelfby]

I can't speak for everyone, but I'd personally be fine with something along the lines of "here's a summary of what happens in this chapter, it's more-or-less competently written, now let's move on to more interesting things" if there isn't anything particularly noteworthy in it. Your usual in-depth analyses are awesome, but if there just isn't much to comment on, I think it's fine to acknowledge that and move on.

Objectivity-wise, I think all your criticism has been fair and warranted - there are a lot of things about the book that objectively don't work, and everyone's opinions are subjective to some extent. If there's anything in particular you're worried about, I'd be happy to look it over and offer a second opinion, but I'm also probably not the most objective person to ask.

[ignoresandra]

That's true, I could skip parts that aren't as important? But then it's like. What I think isn't important isn't always what isn't important. Regardless, thanks for what you've said. I've started at least, and I'm finding things to comment on with a closer reading.

I think I should start conceptualizing Cox's work as an onion. There's always going to be something.

[epistler]

Yeahhh. Ignoring criticism at least lets you preserve some vestiges of your dignity.

If I were him I wouldn't be making any sort of public response to it either. I might well do some soul-searching in private, but there's a BIG difference between that and throwing a public temper tantrum in the noble tradition of Anne Rice and Laurel K Hamilton, neither of whom ever fully recovered.