Wednesday, December 31: Tune It Or Die!
YOU SAY YOU WANT A RESOLUTION
by Rob Lopresti
I resolve that in the year 2009 …
I will send a story out every month (although it may be an older, unpublished story, seeking a new market).
I will let no adverb pass into my story without passing a thorough exam to prove it is needed there.
Ditto for each use of the words very, got, frown, shrug, and sigh.
I will immediately stop reading any piece of fiction in which a character accurately senses that someone is watching him, unless it has been previously established that this story takes place in a universe in which magic works.
I will try to make my characters voices so distinctive that you don’t need to read “Joe said” to know it was Joe who spoke.
I will read at least one book each by some of the acknowledged masters of mystery fiction whom I have not yet Gotten Around To.
I will immediately stop reading any piece of fiction in which a character doesn’t call the cops for no good reason except that doing so would spoil the story.
I will make my funny blog entries funnier, and my serious ones more serious, and endeavor to make it clear which is which.
I will not buy any book online if a local bookstore can get it for me, unless and until Amazon starts organizing author readings in my town.
I will read more mystery blogs that don’t appear on Criminal Brief.
I will remove from my shelves the books I will never read, or never reread.
I will make a copy of any computer file I want to keep more than the day. Flash drives are cheap, self-flagellation is not.
I will immediately stop reading any story in which police officers refer to bullets fired from a shotgun, unless it has been previously established that the cops are too stupid to know shotguns shoot shot or slugs.
I will write more blog entries about the process of writing.
I will not buy books from chain stores until the owners of Barnes and Noble start banking in my town.
I will win an Edgar, a Shamus, or at the very least, a Pulitzer.
I will read more short stories.
Hurray! Great resolutions. I will aspire to do the same.
You’ve been saving that title all year! What a great one. I like your resolutions.
>I will immediately stop reading any piece of fiction in which a character accurately senses that someone is watching him, unless it has been previously established that this story takes place in a universe in which magic works.
But we do, Rob, we do:
https://criminalbrief.com/?p=4532
>I will immediately stop reading any piece of fiction in which a character doesn’t call the cops for no good reason except that doing so would spoil the story.
Er, does that mean you’re dropping mystery fiction? Even the terrific Jeffrey Deaver is guilty: His hero had his romantic interest hold a cop at gunpoint while he (the hero) ran off to confront the local sociopath in a closed mental hospital, nearly losing his life.
I think my resolution will be:
I will immediately stop writing any piece of fiction in which a character doesn’t call the cops for no good reason except that doing so would spoil the story.
>I will read more mystery blogs that don’t appear on Criminal Brief.
A few days ago, I was communicating with Dick Stodghill. He mentioned that he thought Criminal Brief might be the best thing on the web.
I will remove from my shelves the books I will never read, or never reread
I’m tryiing, I’m trying. At least I have a year to do it in.
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE!
I’ve tried in the past to remove from my shelves the books I will never read, or never reread without success, and maybe I’ll give it another try. Read more short stories is one that I will try to keep.
One sure way to get rid of books you don’t truly cherish is to move from a house to an apartment. It worked fine for me.
Rob, if we no longer can have bullets fired from shotguns does this mean we also cannot have revolvers with safetys? Boy, this is getting to be a tough business.
… if we no longer can have bullets fired from shotguns does this mean we also cannot have revolvers with safetys?
Likewise, no revolvers with silencers, either.
I should say that all of my vows above to stop reading are things I encountered recently in published works. Another – too hard to put into a resolution – was a female PI who called a cop and used all her feminine wiles to get the name of the driver of a car. Fair enough, but one thinks she could have gotten the same result faster by pointing out (accurately) that the driver had just run over several parking meters.
I tend to keep my resolutions short so they can easily be resolved before the end of the next year.
One I will borrow from you is to read more short stories.
Rob, I am going to adopt a number of these (I’ll leave the Pulitzer, etc., for another year).