A Bright Shining Pile of . . .

Demon Baby's favorite word . . . CRAP!

Over on J.A. Konrath's blog is a great post about when you give up on a book. I actually think it's pretty brilliant advice and very much realistic and dead-on. But if you go to the comments, the third one down had me laughing out loud--with recognition.

I think everyone at some point writes a bright, shining, beautiful pile of crap. Everyone has, somewhere (heck, maybe you're even submitting it!), a book with the best character ever and dialogue that belongs on the silver screen. In my case, it would be dialogue directed by this man. If you don't know his films, suffice it to say they are "quirky." I'd like to MARRY Wes Anderson or at least have cocktails. I love his films, and they aren't everyone's taste, but in my bright, shining piles of crap, everyone talks like they are in a Wes Anderson film--and I wrote dialogue this way long before I even knew Wes Anderson existed.

Bright, shining piles of crap don't go anywhere. They don't do anything but sit there shining in their faux-brilliance. They don't MOVE. There's no forward propulsion.

Crap doesn't have a point. Except to amuse itself. Or, if you writer horror, scare yourself. Or if you write sci-fi, dazzle yourself. It very frequently has plot holes that the writer doesn't see because he or she was so blinded by the quirky, wonderful, scary, funny, or genius quality of the main character.

Crap is often colorful. Ask any mother of a baby with technicolored-poop. (Why is my baby's poop GREEN? is one of the most common questions asked by new moms everywhere!). Colorful crap exists just to admire its uniqueness.

Finally, writers are often excessively in love with the bright, shining piles. There IS something there. There is! I can tell you for sure, your crap and mine . . . there is something there and you know it. The main character, the sidekick, the hook. Something's there. But it's not a book. Or not a good enough book.

Maybe it's that last one. It's just not good enough. And so you abandon the bright, shining pile because you learned something. Maybe someday you will even resurrect it. Maybe you'll use the sidekick in another book.

But for now, know that is why it's being rejected. We all have one of these in our harddrive somewhere.

Thoughts?

P.S. And if you haven't visited the Demon Baby blog lately . . . know the kid doesn't just love the word "crap"--he now spins it into its own language. We have craptastic, crapalicious . . . and finally, his new word . . . CRAPPLE! (Which is actually a SONG he made up. ) As the Demon Madonna, I never cease to be amazed at the depths of his evil genius.