Found it! Didn’t know I still had it, sooo delighted I do!
“You are a good writer. I know you are writing a genre piece, but I would still like more to distinguish our hero, boss, heroine, etc from everyone ever written. You are doing the formula well (except for the names) but with your ability I think you could give us a lot more. More that would make this story stand out from the crowd on an editor’s desk!”
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that is the horrible review that made me hang up my typewriter for a year or so when I was twenty. At first I just didn’t feel like writing, but after it sank in a bit, I cried.
What? It’s not horrible, it’s actually good?
Well, yeah. It is. *grin* Somehow I remember it as much more awful. I got that the same day I received favorable comments from everyone else in the group, not to mention “Very Good” emphatically underlined by Michael Collins.
And the moral of this story? Young people are stupid. Imagine if I’d taken that darned thing home and hacked, chopped, improved and learned, and started sending it out.
*shudder* Yeah, forget that. The story is crap. Think Tom Clancy not nearly so well-written, with a plot that makes no sense and all the characters keep standing around moralizing at each other. (All the characters. Nearly all the time.) But the characters are good once I cut the speeches, and I also found the beginning of a novel that came out of it, using the same characters…
The writing life goes on.
Pingback: Sticks and Stones | Escapist Ramblings