Re: RARA-AVIS: Why books are over 200 pages
RMINOT@aol.com
Sat, 5 Sep 1998 10:05:03 EDT
Writing longer is media slang for filling up more pages with
words. An ediotr
will often assign a mag piece and say, "I want 1,000 words by
Friday," then
tell the writer Friday morning, "Can you write longer? We lost
an ad page,"
Or "Can you write shorter? We got a last-minute ad and need to
cut
editorial." Same deal iin books except they never ask you to
"write shorter."
We now live in a winner-loser-driven world (sadly) where a
genre writer who
has any success at all is required (like P>D> James) to
write long and
preferably only once a year to create a "buzz" (ugh!!) to jack
up the price
of the hardcover and also to indulge the ubiquitous corporate
mentality that
equates BIG with WINNER and small with loser. So you get these
dictionary-
sized tomes from Ludlum et al so the CEO (or CEO wannabe) can
heft it out of
his/her briefcase and feel IMPORTANT. Gone are the days of the
short story,
the taut, well plotted genre books that enabled the writer to
eke out a
respectable albeit meagre living on small but frequent and
steady advances.
More on this later, I need coffee.
Reeves
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