Writer Commiserates With Writer
to Writer X
You say this editor said she loved your writing and your proposal? Said she was touched and moved and she “knows the piece will be an inspiration to our readers”? Then asked for five substantial rewrites, which "involved suggestions to restructure and to fudge information"?
I don't understand this at all. Why would the publisher put in that kind of time and effort = dollars unless they were training someone for future use? (like your Harlequin friend. PS-- that explains why I and many others have stopped reading romances: they are DOA. ) Why start with your own writing unless they intend to use it? Why not do what most ghostwriters/factory mags/newspaper feature writers do-- tape phone interviews and then distort the answers to fit their pre-established formula?
It seems to me that a truthful account of this experience would make a great expose in a competing magazine or scholarly journal-- or at least make a big splash on relevant blogs. Truth is not optional in a field that claims to be science. If distortion and fudging is the practice -- to be "inspirational", in the Oprah/Frey way-- that is despicable. Psychology as con game.
to Writer B
I think we can safely assume that what is meant by "conservative" eliminates plays like AWAKE AND SING or GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS-- the ones we are thinking of as "about business' but which are really about greed and hypocrisy. A conservative business play assumes that business embodies positive values, and that success in business is the reward of fair practice, innovation, and hard work, and that through business people of good character contribute to the community in numerous positive ways, both material and spiritual.
There are some pretty good plays like this--- really, there are. I've just repressed the memory of them..... I'm a small-c communist, myself.
My own PARTNERS, on my web site, buys into the notion that business is a fit use of talent and effort, and that for a woman to devote herself to it can be a positive choice. but it's a metaphor!
Shaw's Major Barbara is ostensibly pro-business. Of course it also endorses war as Social Darwinism......
You say this editor said she loved your writing and your proposal? Said she was touched and moved and she “knows the piece will be an inspiration to our readers”? Then asked for five substantial rewrites, which "involved suggestions to restructure and to fudge information"?
I don't understand this at all. Why would the publisher put in that kind of time and effort = dollars unless they were training someone for future use? (like your Harlequin friend. PS-- that explains why I and many others have stopped reading romances: they are DOA. ) Why start with your own writing unless they intend to use it? Why not do what most ghostwriters/factory mags/newspaper feature writers do-- tape phone interviews and then distort the answers to fit their pre-established formula?
It seems to me that a truthful account of this experience would make a great expose in a competing magazine or scholarly journal-- or at least make a big splash on relevant blogs. Truth is not optional in a field that claims to be science. If distortion and fudging is the practice -- to be "inspirational", in the Oprah/Frey way-- that is despicable. Psychology as con game.
to Writer B
I think we can safely assume that what is meant by "conservative" eliminates plays like AWAKE AND SING or GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS-- the ones we are thinking of as "about business' but which are really about greed and hypocrisy. A conservative business play assumes that business embodies positive values, and that success in business is the reward of fair practice, innovation, and hard work, and that through business people of good character contribute to the community in numerous positive ways, both material and spiritual.
There are some pretty good plays like this--- really, there are. I've just repressed the memory of them..... I'm a small-c communist, myself.
My own PARTNERS, on my web site, buys into the notion that business is a fit use of talent and effort, and that for a woman to devote herself to it can be a positive choice. but it's a metaphor!
Shaw's Major Barbara is ostensibly pro-business. Of course it also endorses war as Social Darwinism......
posted by G.L.Horton at 9:50 PM
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