- Reviews & Essays
- Get a Fucking Edigor er Editor
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Click hereLike maggots out of meat, learned armchair critics and even the occasional academic come out of pandiculation. Instead of going for a run to reduce spreading tummy fat and release flatulence their eyes burn with loathing and they belt out a curt message to me.
Usually the message is signed 'Anonymous USA', 'Knut in Oslo' or simply 'Anonymous' who in reality is a Retired School Teacher in a secure facility in Maryland.
The main theme of their message is 'Get an editor' or 'Get a fucking editor'.
Oh boy do my literary inadequacies make their day. These hundreds of critics return to their chairs like knights of old gloating in knowledge of a job well done. Occasionally they may have groveled and added, "As it happened I like the story. It had originality and ended with an unexpected twist."
Of course a few go on to put in the boot: "Your characters are not loveable [Holy shit what did they expect when my characters were not New Zealanders?], "I didn't like him shafting the heroine's sister [Hello, did you wish he shafted you instead pal?] and "The sex scenes were unsatisfactory being more about fluids releasing than emotions unleashed [baby ask any woman does she ever have satisfactory sex].
Excuse me for being cynical but that's the way I am. It gives me a cutting edge with writing because it means I always have something to say even when endeavoring to repeat myself to fill in the gaps and get the fucking submission beyond the minimum 800 words.
Of course all these critics have an aunt who's a retired university professor of zoology that would simply love to escape tedium of eating and watching appalling TV by getting her teeth into my submissions to Erotoica er Literotica.
I even have fucking idiots advising me to use a spellchecker. It's no use saying I put every submission through MSWord 2000 spellchecker because they are not interested in reading my defense. Being domicile in New Zealand I've just uncorrected defence and changed it to defense in the belief that the greatest number of my readers on Literotica misspell defence that way. But do I moan about that? No never.
You see it's a matter of being reasonable. I expect my readers to make allowances for my spelling and grammatical inadequacies should they exist in the proportions one assumes if reading the outrages of braying critics.
Please read this: I don't want an editor. I'm possessive and value my created stories [well most of them]. I simply want to release them on to the poor unsuspecting world in their original form, presented as created.
Probably contrary to the belief of some spell/grammar critics, I do read every 'criticism' even if some make me puke [well I couldn't puke unless I read them, could I?]. And it's true I wriggle in my writer's chair in embarrassed delight when say, um, Aunt Fanny form er from Pine Apple in Alabama (pop. plus or minus 150) writes, "I love your stories; they send me to sleep" or from the Baptist Ladies Needlework Collective in Virginia, "Your irreverent approach to the glory of sex does have some appeal to this group, or at least to we two -- Louise and Thelma."
Now don't get me wrong. Not all critics deliver repetitive shit. I had a guy write recently, "In this story your failed to flesh out your main characters."
Well although I'm not one to have the heroine walk with a crooked limp and wipe her nose on her chantilly lace sleeve and the rich dark-tanned hero [plagiarism from a chocolate ad?] caressed her tummy button because that was the central being of his blonde darling with blue eyes carrying a glint of yellow."
Well following Mick's comment or whatever his name was I went back and found it was true, that my heroine only gave something of her character away by the way she spoke [ungrammatically?] and how she thought. But I'd not stated whether or not she wore sun glasses, scratched her left tit, had hair or wore clothes, had eyes, nose or teeth and was capable of walking, sitting or sleeping.
God, what a wake-up call.
As a result my next story was awash with character detail and the plot was virtually non-existent. Well I readjusted and thank that critic for assisting in that. He did a fine job.
Following is a cut and paste from a reader's comment today:
By: Anonymous in MN, USA I really liked this story. Full of good stuff, however there were a few grammer errors that threw me off when reading it a few times. Otherwise a great story.
He or she can't spell either but didn't mention spelling, only 'grammer'.
Well that's enough from me. I've taken all this to ask, could critics remember to comment about the story when ranting about speling and grammer. Thank you for reading this far. E.G.
THE END
- COMMENTS
Spot on. I read right over misspellings and occasionally think of the tee shirts that skip every other letter or so to make the point that if you can't read this you're an idiot. Kiwi? Odd how I seem to gravitate to NZ authors. Cagivagurl most recently, now here. Must be the writing cadence taught at Uni.
Onya Mate. I'm reding this in 2024 and love your stuff. With your volume you're bound to have the occasional miss. I used to write stories for my American Lady in Grand Rapids, MI, unfortunately ALS took her, So I gave it away. Your nearby Mate, Mike in Tassie. ( Ex-Pom.
Well said Egmont but Anonymous from MN USA has a point. Originality in diction is good but spelling also helps. I am working through all your submissions, enjoying them immensely. I also really like your sense of humour and your story lines are great but I also get confused when you double up on words out of place. I bet you had an Egidor when you were a journo. I really enjoy stories with a storyline involving over 60s. Why are we conditioned to believe that we are dead from the neck down after 50... I’m in my early 70s and live in SW West Oz (that’s Australia to those of you living over the ditch)
I do read with a jaundiced eye to those who could do with an outside critic source for their writing. Note: only if they mention their "newness" to writing, are interesting, original or enjoyable. My reading is for personal enjoyment, amusement and distraction and author it with an agenda, against the generalized shortcomings of a white male, I ignore it.
Writing a business letter with clarity, brief and pointed exhausts me. The writer who offer their stories to Lit, put effort in that I appreciate and must also exhaust(s) them too. In short the author that I would like to offer editing skills to is one who "wants' It, I enjoy or appreciate their stories and want them to continue writing for my reading time.
Edgemont, You Sir, Do Not need an editor.
Please continue writing for your own enjoyment and (my) our pleasure.
Best wishes
xtremedd
PS Spellchecked & for 9th grade reading level or above.
Thanks for this article. I haven't spoken to an author who isn't narked at the 'Anonymous' wisdom generator, the critic who criticises and doesn't leave their name.
You are by no means alone.. someone told me the following, and I thought it appropriate to share. Just because some can leave feedback, doesn't mean they should, and it certainly doesn't make them credible either.
Then again... where there's muck, there's brass!
JJ
I have read a considerable number of your stories, they are long so require some degree of commitment to get to the end. Your stories are enjoyable, maintain attention and we care about your characters. On the whole your stories are pretty well edited, I suspect you read your material and correct it before inflicting it upon us, so I don't often find errors.
I'm a little surprised you are bitching about regional differences, they just exist and be thankful that Noah Webster wasn't from the deep south: US spelling horrors would be much, much worse. I do get bent out of shape by homonym errors, particularly persistent ones, because they do spoil a story: I read the words not the sounds so I build up a very different mental picture between, for example, sight and site. A site has bulldozers; cranes; dump trucks: you get the picture: "Oh! You are a beautiful site" builds a picture of some teenage beauty with Tonka Toys running all over her - not what you probably intended. Some, not yours, stories are rife with these homonyms and they do spoil the pleasure of reading. I generally give up after a few paragraphs. I am a writer, and I learned the hard way what lazy writing does when I started reading excerpts. Each time you make a booboo, you lose your audience for as much as half a minute; that's about a sentence and a half. What happens is these haitii accumulate and you notice quite markedly that the audience miss essential facts after each booboo; and then lose the thread entirely.
Our language is one of the few things of beauty shared by a huge number of cultures from the USA to New Zealand and our words do carry a lot of fascinating baggage: American literature suffers because of Noah Webster’s spelling purge: you cannot express the richness of ideas using American spellings - there is a huge difference in weight between color and colour. So if an author wishes to assert the right to write illiterate prose I reserve the right to castigate him or her for it.
If you write to be read then you have a responsibility to your readers to make it enjoyable: If you write to feel good about yourself, then there is no point in my reading it.
As to your material, I do ignore the odd booboo, but I do remember remarking to myself recently that couple of your stories were not up to your usual standard: I suspect you know this as this little gripe follows shortly after your proof reading fiascos.
Finally, and this is a key point, some of the stories on literotica are dire, you see the authors write one, or maybe two stories and then vanish. They are often very short and I seldom get much further than the first paragraph. Your stories are not dire; we do read to the end; so if we bitch slap you afterwards it’s because we care; and somewhere in our consciousness believe that you care too. True, the world is also full of arseholes and some of them criticize your work for the sake of it but most of us do it out of love: literary criticism is very hard; gosh! Writing itself is none too easy! So our comments may come across as odd and with strange emphases, but if you sit back and read the tenor, not the letter of the criticisms, you will find there is something to take away. And if Retired Teacher From Memphis wants to grade your paper, maybe he or she has a point. They care about the language they speak: maybe you should too. Slowly but surely we are losing the richness of the language we speak, like global warming, we will try to fix it when it is far too late.
and the idea that sentences like your following have been rotated through an editor. "Being domicile in New Zealand I've just uncorrected defence and changed it to defense in the belief that the greatest"
Being domiciled in the US. Without the attack on your readers I would have let this one go. Try writing for ASSTR and leave off your return address, no problems with reviews or comments by those meanie readers.
It is real easy to be a critic. While I will admit that some of the stories have problems with grammar and spelling, I have one answer to ALL of the critics.
One has to EARN the right to be a critic. The way to earn that right is be producing a better product. It is time to put up or shut up
Almost all of your stories have great story line and good sex - I think in that order. Several times I have started reading a story (did not note the author when I started) and then checked and smiled it was one of yours. Because of the quality of the storyline I did check. Keep writing.
And THANKS ! ! !
A standing ovation & a salute for writing this. Truely outstanding.
Thanks everyone who expressed views on this submission. It won't change anything but makes me feel supported. I think this extract below from 'Anonymous' gets to the heart of the matter as a message to readers who bleat about a spelling error (making it sound is there's a thousand of them in the story) and those who also grind on about grammar or their version of it:
"..it's just a fucken story! Get over it and stop your bitchin'!"
Lol! Pity the dopes won't read this submission and responses, probably because they don't like the finger being pointed at their pathetic grouching.