Yesterday I received my first official rejection email for a short story I wrote. It was from The Missouri Review, and the editor who sent it was very kind. Having read and re-read the story many times, I’m aware of its faults. Specifically, I have a problem with point-of-view. I tend to want to write from what they call “third person limited,” meaning the narrator is supposed to be just over the shoulder of a particular character, seeing his, her, or its thoughts but no one else’s. However, I keep slipping into other people’s heads.
I’m all for experimental art, and this idea of fluidly slipping in and out of different characters’ heads is interesting. However, if I’m not aware that I’m doing that, it leads to sloppy and confusing writing.
So, I intend on re-working this story, giving it two distinct and deliniated points of view. But you don’t want to know about all that. You want to know about my bowel movements. Well, I just got off of a week of high-pressured hell of the family variety; my brain isn’t working well. I’m sorry I don’t have anything more spectacular than P.O.V.-talk.
face | 31-Jul-08 at 3:48 pm | Permalink
Maybe you need the POV of a bisexual?
m_rturnage | 31-Jul-08 at 4:06 pm | Permalink
The last rejection letter I got for a screenplay said this:
I cannot tell what genre it is. Sometimes it is funny, and sometimes it is sad. Make the genre more defined so I know how to react to the script.
***
Editors are under a completely different set of pressures than writers, and often the editors cannot articulate what they want. The only way to learn is to send them something and go, “Something like this?” and they, “No… I don’t know, make it more POV-vey.” And then you send them something that is all about the POV and they go, “Ew. Too much POV.”
And then you send something else in the color of eggshell and they love it because eggshell is their favorite color of off-white and that was what was REALLY bothering them all along - the color of your paper was too pale. That has always been my experience dealing with editors.
Meanwhile, please wax poetic on the bowel movements.
mmazzocco | 03-Aug-08 at 9:23 am | Permalink
Due to the nature of my puppies most recent illness (2 different kinds of intestinal parasites) I have been keenly attuned to bowel movements. Indeed I was suited up yesterday morning (6AM) to bag and tag poop samples before our weekly trip to the vet (double bagged, color coded labels matching their collars) - I am all about the poo these days so please…