Man...you'd think I would learn not to expect anything from anyone after they screw me around, but I still fall flat-faced into crap of my own making. This time it's from the National Novel Writing Festival, about whom I've already complained. I thought they were doing something honest...and boy did I get fooled.
These are the guys who had a "professional editor" read my novel, The Alice '65, and tear it apart. Used bad grammar to complain about my grammar. Had typos and missing words...and misused words. Ignored how the story was told in third person but with a first person viewpoint. It hurt...then it angered me, once I got past that. Then it confused me, because they said I'd gotten a really good score and won an audio reading of the first 2000 words of the book.
My gut instinct was to say no...but I talked myself into it. The other videos they had posted were workmanlike enough to be used as a sales tool. Well...yesterday they posted the video they did for me, on their site and on YouTube. It's of a man sitting in a cubicle in an office, a camera trained on him as he reads my book off a tablet and stumbles over it like he's never seen it before. He's trying -- I can't fault the reader -- but you can hear office noises in the background and it's obvious this is the first time he's set eyes on the story. It's so cheap-assed and amateurish, it's a detriment to the book.
I was livid. But I held back and asked some friends what they thought, just to make certain I wasn't over-reacting. Consensus is...it's like a first cold read-through in preparation to do a better job. To my mind, there is nothing in it to help the book except my words...many of which he cannot pronounce. Granted, Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso doesn't roll off the tongue...but that's why a reader should familiarize himself with the work.
I used to belong to the Playwright's Kitchen Ensemble in LA, and every week we'd have actors do cold readings from scripts. Granted, the majority of them were trained in speaking and had a focus few people have, but they also spent every moment they could prior to the read getting familiar with the work. A cold reading isn't really cold, it's just a first-time being read aloud. Some of those people, after five minutes with my pages, found aspects of my scripts I didn't know were there...and which I made damn sure got added in. It was amazing to watch and to hear. These people did nothing even remotely like that.
Now here's the capper -- what that festival did for my reading was nothing like they've done for anyone else, and I'm damn close to feeling insulted by it. I asked them to take it off their site and off YouTube. I want nothing to do with it. It's an embarrassment.
Moral of the story -- listen to your gut.
These are the guys who had a "professional editor" read my novel, The Alice '65, and tear it apart. Used bad grammar to complain about my grammar. Had typos and missing words...and misused words. Ignored how the story was told in third person but with a first person viewpoint. It hurt...then it angered me, once I got past that. Then it confused me, because they said I'd gotten a really good score and won an audio reading of the first 2000 words of the book.
My gut instinct was to say no...but I talked myself into it. The other videos they had posted were workmanlike enough to be used as a sales tool. Well...yesterday they posted the video they did for me, on their site and on YouTube. It's of a man sitting in a cubicle in an office, a camera trained on him as he reads my book off a tablet and stumbles over it like he's never seen it before. He's trying -- I can't fault the reader -- but you can hear office noises in the background and it's obvious this is the first time he's set eyes on the story. It's so cheap-assed and amateurish, it's a detriment to the book.
I was livid. But I held back and asked some friends what they thought, just to make certain I wasn't over-reacting. Consensus is...it's like a first cold read-through in preparation to do a better job. To my mind, there is nothing in it to help the book except my words...many of which he cannot pronounce. Granted, Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso doesn't roll off the tongue...but that's why a reader should familiarize himself with the work.
I used to belong to the Playwright's Kitchen Ensemble in LA, and every week we'd have actors do cold readings from scripts. Granted, the majority of them were trained in speaking and had a focus few people have, but they also spent every moment they could prior to the read getting familiar with the work. A cold reading isn't really cold, it's just a first-time being read aloud. Some of those people, after five minutes with my pages, found aspects of my scripts I didn't know were there...and which I made damn sure got added in. It was amazing to watch and to hear. These people did nothing even remotely like that.
Now here's the capper -- what that festival did for my reading was nothing like they've done for anyone else, and I'm damn close to feeling insulted by it. I asked them to take it off their site and off YouTube. I want nothing to do with it. It's an embarrassment.
Moral of the story -- listen to your gut.
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