Contest: What’s Your Worst Writing Habit?

CONTEST OFFICIALLY CLOSED.
Thanks to everyone who participated; we got over 100 entries! Winners will be posted shortly.
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Want to win a full critique of your manuscript? Tell us about your worst writing habit – that nasty little flaw you’re trying to shake but just can’t.

Mine? I can’t seem to let a line of dialogue go by without adding some kind of little action to it, until my characters are lowering their eyes and looking up and walking around and fidgeting like they’re shaking off a bad round of PCP. In edits, cutting that out tends to get rid of a few thousand words on its own. I know I shouldn’t do it, but it keeps creeping in anyway, so I just let it happen and keep a sharp eye out for it when ripping the finished draft into bloody little pieces.

So what’s yours?

The rules:

1. You have to comment to win. Share your worst writing habit. Make sure to leave a valid email in the email field so that, if you win, I can contact you. Email addresses are not displayed publicly.

2. I’ll critique both literary and genre fiction manuscripts anywhere from 30k to 100k in length, but not non-fiction. It’s not that I don’t like it; I’m just not qualified to critique it.

3. Entries will remain open until December 20th, 2011. At that point I’ll choose one first-prize winner and one runner-up at random, and contact them for their manuscripts. The first-prize winner’s manuscript will be read in full and marked up in Word with editorial commentary, accompanied by an email discussing overall impressions and critique points. The critique will remain private between me and the author. The runner-up will receive a critique and markup of their first three chapters only.

4. The winners will, however, be announced in a blog post. The top five comments will also be posted to the blog, with my responses on how to help kick that habit.

5. This is not an official submissions call. Do not email any materials for the contest unless officially requested. (Well, if you want to query, go ahead, but it’s not related to the contest.) The contest is in no way affiliated with my work at Entangled Publishing, and neither participating nor winning constitutes any form of endorsement for publication. Any queries for publication are considered separately, and contest participants are welcome to submit their stories outside of the contest provided they comply with Entangled Publishing’s submission guidelines.

Get it? Got it? Good. Get to commenting!

P.S. If your comment doesn’t show up immediately, Akismet probably caught it. I check the spam filter regularly and will fish it out in short order, so no need to repost.

Musing.

The other day a friend called me a f***ing bastard for critiquing her manuscript. And then she told me she loved me for it.

It didn’t upset me when she said that, but it did make me stop and think. I get that reaction a lot, for a lot of things. Mostly for critiquing manuscripts and stories, pointing out flaws in the writing, characterization, pacing, plot, continuity. Sometimes for talking people through personal crises. I don’t try to be an asshole, but I don’t lie. And it hurts people, yet I rarely lose friends over it. Something about appreciating the honesty, even if it hurts.

It just amazes me that people keep coming back for more.

I tend to enjoy writing characters who are what I call necessary evils – people who do terrible things and are generally reprehensible people as a whole, but it’s never so simple as that…because they do these terrible things for a good cause, and know it. They may enjoy the godawful things they do, but they wouldn’t be able to condone it if it wasn’t for a higher moral reason.

It never occurred to me that I might be one of those necessary evils myself, although on a much, much smaller scale more realistically applicable to real-life situations in which sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. Less evil than unrepentantly blunt.

I can’t be anything other than who and what I am. I can’t say things I don’t believe. And I can’t blow smoke up a friend’s ass when the truth will help them become a better writer – and while the truth may hurt their feelings, the effusive, encouraging lie would harm them far more in the long run.

I guess that makes me a f***ing bastard.

Long live the bastards.