Shameful Admissions

[oloriel]

The dead week has come, and I must go to work.

Actually work has three absolutely dead weeks: the last two weeks of December and the first week of January; but the week between Christmas and New Year's, the last week, this week, is the deadest of them all.

Two years ago I also had to work Between Years, and unfortunately M. had to "work" as well, so I spent 20 hours that week trying to look busy while he played tennis on his cell phone (because Eru forbid I don't do my work. Even if there is no work.)

This year M. has taken off for Between Years, and the only other person from our department who is there with me is C., another student.

C. is nice and has a working brain, making me wonder what she's doing in this company (but then who am I to talk), and of course she knows as well as I that you have to bide the time somehow, since at some point, even with all the work left over from the busy last weeks, there's just nothing left. Especially when the idiotic translating project you were supposed to work on suddenly got turned into "Oh, it is translated already, you just format it so the fonts are congruent and such." And pick up the mistakes made by the guy who did the translation in my place, who apparently uses British and American English interchangeably and does not know how to write "whether".

"So what are you doing?" C. asks me.
"Formatting that stupid test procedure," says I.
"Yeah," says she. "I mean, besides that, when the time is up."
I am unsure what to say - admit that I am doing something aside from working? Not that she doesn't know, but duh, you don't talk about that.
Then again, whyever not?
"Come on, fess up," says C. "See, I'm reading New Moon. There, whatever you do, it can't be that embarrassing."
I snerk. "I," I say, "am reading Twilight."
"You're lucky," C. comments. "That one is still readable."

It actually is, colour me surprised. I cringe a lot because Smeyers makes a lot of the mistakes I would have made a few years ago, before I started getting into fanfic, and the random tense changes, the bouts of purpleness, the chuckling and the unbearable clumsiness (not to mention the bewildering mix of arrogance and self-depreciation) of Bella make me GROAN.
Whenever I groan, C. laughs and says, "Oh, did he chuckle again?"
You could turn it into a drinking game.

Still, it is dull, but not irredeemable: A lot of shortening in some quarters and some additional work in others could have turned this into a quite enjoyable read. It is sad that among the many people who read Smeyer's manuscript and encouraged that she publish it there was not one capable beta-reader.

I doubt I'll manage to read the sequels, though. I am not that masochistic. But as for the first book, I've been forced to read Pulitzer-prize winning books that were written worse.
Huh.

Comments

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

I doubt I'll manage to read the sequels, though. I am not that masochistic.

I said exactly the same. And then I was suddenly reading Breaking Dawn. Trainwreck syndrome. -_-

At least New Moon has the saving grace of many empty pages.

[satismagic.livejournal.com]

Actually, the bewildering mixture of arrogance and self-deprecation is SPOT on for a few teenagers I knew.

(It ALSO seems the standard recipe to use among fanfic authors who want to avoid writing a Mary Sue at all costs and end up with ... with ... yeah... whatever ...)

All I can say is that I am very thankful that you looked over MY manuscript.

And I'm still going to cut at least 30k words before sending off anything to an American agent. Amen.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

That was part of the wincing, actually. That eight or so years ago, I would have identified with Bella A LOT. Although by the time I was old enough for the arrogance, I had gotten over the clumsiness - THAT would have been me at age 12 or so. *g*

And the lack of personality, the pointing-out-the-obvious, the tell, don't show, the not knowing when to stop talking about boring things - a mere two years ago, I would have done that. Mercilessly.

I am not quite sure what your manuscript has to do with this, though.