Monday, April 15, 2013

Day 99 of the 365 Days of Blogging

The author, Dane F. Baylis

 

PLEASE! MAKE THE VOICES STOP!

OR

Just a thing or two that’s DRIVING ME BUGHOUSE!

 
I could probably blame this on the traditional publishers. They have the pipeline to the brick and mortar stores and hold sway with the likes of a certain mega-presence on the Internet that wants to become all things to all people. But that's just where it starts. Besides, this didn’t begin in the cyber-era.
Every period has had its million seller fiction. (Well, at least the eras that could muster a million LITERATE souls.)  Elizabethan drama, Transcendentalist treatise, the satire of late nineteenth century America, Dickensian grit, detective novels, fantasy, vampire, mommy porn. All right, I get it! You have one author who hits it and every shut-in with a keyboard wants on the band wagon. Sherlock Holmes eventually becomes steam punk and Tolkien is reproduced over and over (without the care and sense of storytelling) until dragons become household pets. If I even see one more vampire series, I swear I will track down the author and drive a stake through his or her heart! And I don’t care HOW MANY shades it came in, that was the most unerotic erotica I’ve EVER read. What’s followed would put a nymphomaniac to sleep. (Talk about an effective form of non-prescription birth control.)
There were two hundred and fifty thousand MORE e-books published last year than there were physical books. I will wager dollars to doughnuts two hundred forty nine thousand nine hundred of those should never have seen the light of day. Why? Go ahead, download one of the $.99 specials. Likely it is rife with misspelling, misuse, and grammar that would have grandma spinning in her grave!
I appreciate everyone wants their fifteen minutes. Does it have to be so unreadably painful for the rest of us? Not that I place a lot of faith in the app, but what happened to Spell Check? I keep seeing the symbol for it everywhere. What do these fledgling Kerouac’s imagine it’s for…Checking to see if they’re having one?
Let’s not even touch on plot and genre for the moment…My med’s are still lost in the mail and I can’t risk the apoplexy the subject brings on. My only comment is, if someone else has already done it…Why? Okay, if you can do it that much better, and someone other than your mom says you have achieved that goal, great. We all hate to be superseded but it gives us something to rise against and strive for.
People, the struggle is part of finding your voice. Unless you want to look like the ventriloquist’s wooden headed partner…What’s the other word they call them?…Then put some time into not sounding like a thin, slightly slurred version of another author.
The world needs more writers. Just not more bad ones. It would make the rest of us look good if it weren’t for the fact we’re being buried under the avalanche.
 
 
Meanwhile...live, love, write.
 
Want to follow or subscribe to this blog? There are gadgets for that on the right side of the page. You can leave comments in the form below. I can be reached directly at dbaylis805@gmail.com . You can also find links to some of the sites I visit from time to time on the right. I'm also looking for submissions to the Your Work/Your Love page. Authors retain all rights.

          Later all,

Dane F. Baylis. Author.


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