I got a letter back from that stupid girl. She apologized for sending repeat messages, and said she'd been on for years but never realized there was a zipfile of critiques. Can't say I know what to make of this. But hopefully this story is over.
But, oh noes, the stupidity doesn't stop there. No, I get another one, this from a boy, who thinks that English is not my second language. Now I realize that everyone's got their own opinion and a comment like this should indicate something about my writing. But WTF? Does this sound like I've got a fucking accent? Do I sound like a fucking turban guy? Do I say 'Hey Jay, you want a slurpee? You wanna slurpee?' I'm getting critiques from the lowest common denominators here.
For example, he says "The road back home always became more and more estranged ..." The word 'estranged' is usually applied to relationships between people, not roads. Well, why can't it be applied to roads? It's the road back home, filled with familiar sights, directions, and roads. He's driven on it over and over, it's the one road that was a constant when traveling before he went to school. Sounds like he has a relationship to it to me.
Another example, he says "And, "...as soon as Jeremy laid down on his cool sheets, in his cool, quiet room..." Using the same adjective several times in the same sentence, while not grammatically 'wrong', make it a very awkward sentence. You do this in several other sentences also." Does that indicate an accent? No, it indicates I didn't revise yet. I'd like to know what accent he thinks I have? Maybe I can find a market for my books there.
He also thinks that this is the first section of the story. I think it was pretty clear that this is not the first part through the title and author's notes.
He was right about black violets though. Apparently the species of flower doesn't exist. Thought for sure they would. I wonder if I should keep it in there for the color's sake, or pick a different flower that might not sound as good.
I'm torn between sending this guy an e-mail, telling him he doesn't know his ass from a hat, or just dropping it. I don't have time to get into more literary feuds with 12-year-olds.
The time is being eaten up quickly, and I'm afraid I won't be able to get much writing done this week. I finally got my special laptop working up to cpacity, but now we've got to plant twenty-six plants in our yard, all before Friday, when we're going out of town for the weekend. That's about six plants a day, and that'll eat up my evening to where all I want to do is watch TV and crash. Plus all the hassle we've got to contact the building contractors who are also asshats, property tax issues that didn't get through because of more asshats out there, and my wife is tired and sick all the time because she's pregnant. Thank god she doesn't have morning sickness yet. There's barely any time to sleep, and even that's shitty because it's so goddamn hot. I hate having an upstairs bedroom. It's so goddamn hot a reptile would be going insane. A snake would be banging his head against the wall.Labels: idiots, time, venting, whining