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i debated on whether or not to post this but considering i've posted things related to my sex life and my period on my blog, i thought what the hey! oh and sorry for talking about my sex life and my period.
i received the review from publishers weekly for my novel, cooper cooper. um, they did not enjoy it a fraction as much as my father did. in fact, they enjoyed it as much as an unassuming human enjoys being probed in the ass by an alien:
Potentially interesting plotlines hint at a promising story, but this crowded and convoluted confessional lacks necessary cohesiveness. Riddled with haphazard flashbacks and blatant foreshadowing, the sputtering first-person narrative presents Cooper Cooper as a wayward, neurotic teen, then as a widow whose life--and attitude--has gone from bad to worse. Whether baring witness to Cooper’s past tragedies (her best-friend’s death, another friend’s suicide, an apparent rape) or her current woes (an on-and-off lesbian tryst, her semi-estranged husband’s death from lung cancer, falling in love with her therapist), readers might find it hard to feel sorry for an admitted “self-absorbed crybaby” who also lacks the self-awareness to change her circumstances for the better. While Cooper’s thoughts surely are genuine ones, there are only so many bad metaphors (“I’m a flaccid balloon, an unused condom”) and pages of self-analysis one can read before it feels like slogging through the transcript of her never-ending (and going nowhere) therapy session.
ouch, right? i think matt's face said it all when he thought i was exaggerating and decided to read the thing for himself and his lips scrunched up and he started to turn blue and then he began choking on his tongue. i made up the turning blue part but the rest is pretty accurate.
so why have i decided to humiliate myself and prove that i'm just as crappy at writing as i am at not randomly getting my period on an amusement park log ride? well, because of the following:
- i agree with all of this. my novel is indeed written in the first person and lacks cohesion. the main chick is a total self-absorbed bitch fest who says things like "unused condom." but that's why i like her.
- i need to remind myself this is the first step up a very long and winding staircase. i have talent, i know that, i've been told that, but i also jumped the gun when i found out about the contest, did a quick edit and sent the thing in on a wing and a prayer. and i placed in the top 250 out of 5,000 entrants. that's one lucky flaccid balloon.
- i have a third novel in me - one written in the third person (like REAL novels) that's just as interesting and not at all confusing. hopefully.
i think this review is well written and is the peroxide to my literary wounds: it stings but it heals. and i just may give up my love of crappy metaphors because of it.
the point is this: i know i'm supposed to be a writer because if something like this doesn't punch me in the nuts so hard they fall off, then i know i have it in me to keep going, keep trying and for the love of god to stop writing about therapists. i'm proud of myself because as crappy as this novel may seem it did a very important job - it was my sounding board through a very long depression.
i've talked about my depression when i started this blog but i only had five followers back then (one of which being me, the other being my father) so i don't know if you folks realize the loony bin that is alabaster cow but i'll give you a quick taste: i spent one entire summer eating nothing but frozen grapes and pretzels with mustard in my closet and broke out in crying jags every time i opened the cover of the book cold mountain. i ran twelve miles every day in the hot houston sun (and sometimes in the harsh houston rain) and i discovered this: i'm one crazy son of a bitch. and this has been going on since i was sixteen. but something like
