part of a new book, feedback?

Book should include a map of maui, book should tell what city I live in and where I travel to.


Foreword (subject to change)

Crazier things have happened. Maybe even in my own life, though, I'm not sure, what your about to read is pretty crazy. Names have been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty, other then that, everything your about to read actually happened, and it happened to me. This story takes place in maui, hawaii, over the course of about 2 months. This is not an admission of guilt, and because of that, you will never see the true author of this story. Somone else will publish it, and even they will have a pseudo name. Don't get me wrong, I would love to take credit for this book, its just that todays society wont allow it, they would want to come lock me up the second it is published. After coming back from my life in maui, I always claimed that I could write a book based on the 60-65 days that I lived there, and that's what this is, I will try to tell you what my life was like there, and how different everything is from the only other place ive lived in my life, which is outside of detroit, michigan. Please keep in mind that while I may be portrayed as soulless, most of the characters in this book are good people. My parents, who sent me to maui, thought they were saving my life, but maybe I just cant be saved, who knows. While this whole story takes place, I am only 19 years old, but I, however, consider myself fairly intelligent, and I had been through alot in life up to this point, so much so, that I could write another book just on that.


PROLOGUE


I'm 19 years old, and I'm dopesick, or that's "heroin withdrawal" to you. And on this particular night, it's bad, and I mean really bad, I havnt shot any dope in well over 24 hours, which is beyond the mark of feeling sick. You see, for the past week or so, my parents have been plotting, oh yes. They bought 3 tickets to maui, hawaii. They've been telling me "Your going to hawaii to live". So I think sure, I'll goto maui for a vacation with you guys, detox off of dope and come right back when you find out you wont REALLY leave me there. So this current night that I'm very dopesick, just happens to be the night before the flight. With heroin, there's nothing better then the relief of that injection when your sick. I'm counting down the hours to my flight, and I'm starting to feel cornered, like maybe that relief isnt going to come before this long flight to maui, which just isnt acceptable, so I think up a scheme, which I'm often doing, being a heroin addict and all, but this scheme is hairbrained, failed from the start. My parents have stripped away my ability to drive, for fear that I will disappear and not be on the flight. My buddy (at the time, I wish him death now) mike is just getting off work, he's also a dopefiend, and has managed to hold a job for a little more then a week, which is actually a huge improvement for him, and tonight is the night he gets his first paycheck so I call him up, and say sure, Ill come get you and we'll go cash your check and we'll go down (to detroit). I Plead with my parents for a car, begging them, telling them yes I've been using heroin again, and yes, I am very sick and I need to get right before the flight. They wont budge, absolutely nothing, so I play my last card, I tell my dad that Mike needs a ride home from his job, that no one else will drive him, and since Mike is an old family friend, my dad agree's. We drive to the motel he's working at, mind you, its almost 11 at night, how we were going to even cash his paycheck at a party store was almost an impossibility, since they close at midnight. We get to the motel and he doesent even get out of there till 11:30, I walk in the lobby to get him, I'm walking him back to the car, thus far I have told him nothing of my dad driving us anywhere. So on the way to the car, I hit him with it "Look dude, you dont have a key to get in your parents house, theyre away on vacation, you need to goto mexican town in detroit to get the key from your aunt." he replies, shocked, "Dude your never going to get your dad to drive us to the dopeman, it'll never work." I tell him one last time to just go with it before we get into my dad's truck, him in the backseat. As soon as we get in, I hit my dad with the same story, and Mike actually coroborates it a little bit, to my surprise. I finally start thinking "Maybe this will work." My dad says nothing, as he will often do, a very quiet man, but he gets on the freeway to go to detroit, my hopes shot up, as I'm sure Mikes did too, but the freeway to detroit is also the freeway to my house with my parents, my dad gets off the freeway at our exit and say's "were going to go home first and Mike is going to call his mom and make sure that this is allright." Now hope is feeling lost, not 20 seconds later Mike splurts out "you can just take me to my friends house Mr._______" my dad obliges, drives him all the way back to where he was working near and drops him off. You must understand, I was not getting on that plane dopesick. My dad and I drive back home, and I'm feeling very desperate coming down my parents street, and I devise a new plan, this one a little more risky and even more hairbrained. As soon as he pulls in our driveway, I make a snatch for the keys in the ignition, it doesent work, he's on guard because of the night's events. He gives me a grave look, like he's about to beat my ass, and he's never hit me in my life. So I go inside, defeated, sick, hopeless. I'm rocking back and forth when my mom gives me a muscle relaxer, just one, its a nice joke and a feeble attempt at help, but as I've already told you, I'm feeling desperate. I immediately go to the internet, my guru for alot of the shit I know. I was searching for one thing, and that was to see if this pill I had would be soluble in water, so I could inject it, and hopefully end this sickness a little bit, if it killed me so what, I was wishing I was dead anyway. I come to find that its "slightly soluble in water" which is enough info I needed, I instantly crush the pill and put the remaining powder on a spoon, soak it with some water and put a flame under the spoon, eventually, I draw back a cloudy solution in my syringe. I put it to the vein and after that I dont know what happened. I blacked out with Leno on the TV. I wake up to my girlfriend at the time, love of my life H. Joyce shaking me, wondering if I was okay. I most certainly was not okay, as soon as she woke me up she brought me right back to this hell of dopesickness. See, the thing with being dopesick is that you cant sleep at all, so any sleep you do get, even if its drug induced is a god send. My sickness comes rushing back, Leno still on the screen. It's going to be our 'supposed' last night together, remember, because I'm supposedly suppose to disappear in maui, anyway, its guarenteed to be our last night for atleast a week. She see's how sick I am and takes pitty on me, she smokes weed, but she doesent use the shit I use. For the first time ever, she drives me down to detroit, she only had 9 dollars and I need 50 cents to call my dopeman, but I'm so sick I dont care, I'll make it work. We meet my dopeman, and I give him $8.50 for a pack of dope, when its supposed to be 10 dollars. He's pissed saying "God damnit your supposed to come with 10 dollars." Joyce and I drive back to my parents house, me thanking her the entire way. We get back and I cook up my dope the same way I did with the pill, except this time, I know for sure the relief is on its way. Once the dope is in the syringe, I put it to the vein and instantly feel the warm flush of relief, anything that hurt doesnt anymore, I have confidence, I am normal again, better then normal, feeling great, and most importantly, I will sleep tonight.

Hi Mike's buddy,

I read the foreword and then a paragraph of the prologue before I gave up. I decided within a hundred words or so that I did not want to read about you. I wasn't engage by you and I didn't want to know about the problems you have with your parents. Rightly or wrongly, I formed the opinion that you were a bigger problem to your parents than they were to you.

Good luck with this. If you can prove me wrong (the way you proved your parents wrong by continuing a life of drug-dependency and crime), I will be one of the first to offer congratulations.

kar,

My suggestion to you is to keep writing, but not for publication - not yet. Write for yourself. Keep all this in a journal, and keep journaling, and read what you've written. A journal is a perfect psychological tool to get you through tough times, and to help you to think out your problems. When I was teaching, I kept a sign in my classroom that said, "How do I know what I think until I see what I say."

If you really want to get better, and tell your story, make sure you know yourself first. Then you will be able to cope, to be critical of your work, and do the very hard work of editing and revising and honing the story so that others will want to read it, too.

Ann

I read about as far as Shelagh. This is not the story of someone I would care to know.

Kar, you're posting this story in a place with writers. Some write because they enjoy it while others are striving to learn enough to be published by the majors. I have respect for anyone who has a goal and works toward it.

But the keyword is 'works.'

I do not have respect for those in society who simply take, who find the easy way out, nor am I interested in their stories. Life can be hard, but those who earn my respect are those who work to accomplish something worthwhile.

We have several military men and women on this board, and because of their sense of honor, they did not take the easy way out, whatever it may have been, at the time.

Some on this board have had traumatic events happen, but they didn't escape into drugs or drink. They gritted their teeth and worked through it, and they're worthy of respect.

If you want to write, I suggest you work to learn how to do so. Writing well takes skill, a skill that must be learned just as a doctor or attorney has to learn. Then perhaps whatever story you wish to tell may be more interesting to read.

I have to say...

work posted here for crit is, I would think, asking for comment on the writing, not the personal life, character, etc. of the writer.

He's not asking for sermons, he's trying to figure out how to sell a book.

There isn't much corellation, actually. "Monster" was a huge launch in US books: it's the life of a Crip gangster locked down in the US' most maximum prison. This guy is heartless, soul-less, scumbag killer. People are interested.

There might be an audience for this stuff. "Less Than Zero" sold really well.

But I don't think it's right to rake over the personal nature of a writer just because he asked for input on his writing.

That said, kar, I think you could help yourself a little here by cruising for grammar. Print this out and read over it. Spruce it up.

Another thing, not so much about the book, but forum posting, is that it's hard to read something strung out like that. Go through it with your word processor and Search for the paragraph break and Replace it with two breaks so your posted work will have paragraphs. Break after quotes. I think you want short paragraphs here.

This will help on all forums you put this on. And I suggest you put it on a lot. Skip the "forward". Don't say, "Prologue"--lot's of people are anti-prologue.

As a suggestion, I would consider starting chapters of sections with quotes. Don't put "Chapter 1" Put "Dad Drives Me To My Drug Dealer".

You're trying to sell lurid confessions here, play up to it in your formatting.

Quote :

Writing well takes skill, a skill that must be learned just as a doctor or attorney has to learn.

Forunately for you, this statement is blatantly and demonstrably untrue.
There are LOTS of successful book by somebody who just sat down one day and wrote their life story. Don't let any of this rattle you.

But you DO have to have it together. If you show somebody something with words like todo and havnt and your instead of you're and such they aren't going to take it seriously.

And eventually, you need for somebody like an agent of editor to take it seriously. It could happen, but you have to put some work into it.

You can write the whole thing, then go back and fix it up. That's pretty much what I do. But it's pretty punishing going through a whole book like that.

Let me suggest that you try really polishing up like 5 pages or ten pages. You can do this when you don't feel up to writing, it doesn't require much creativity.
Immaculize the sucker and start running it by feedback forums like this one. Try absolutewrite, editred, writers forum.com etc. That latter would be a good one, I think. But if it's not polished up, you'll just get grammar comments.

The reason I suggest that you work on it as you move along is that I think editing could help you learn how to "edit as you go", making less work in the long run. Not just grammar, either.

I'm talking about things like:

--am I too wordy here? should I trim a little, get down to the guts?

--how can I shape this scene to it draws the reader in with it's first line and drags them up to a nice "punchline"? (This is going to be a major part of you trying to get a commercial product out of this)

For instance. Why say "I'm nineteen" right out of the box?
What if you start out with like, "I getting sick and going to be sicker. It's what happens when I don't get a shot in 24 hours. etc

Then end up the graph with something like "They're telling me this will kill me. But what do I know; I'm only nineteen."

You might have a shot with this. Or not. But you have to give it your best shot.

Lin, while I see your point about personal observations, I disagree with you about simply pounding something out. Want to bet that all those people wrote their autobiographies on their own? Most of them had professional writers write it for them.

And for the minute amount that may have, perhaps, pounded something out and by the fates made mega bucks, I'm sure they had some sort of guidance, just like you are now offering suggestions. You had to learn, by books or experience, how to write.

Brenda is right.

She's right about Lin too. He is recommending that Kar222 should seek out further sites for critique.

If I wanted to be mean I would take that bet. Believe me, writing is not brain surgery.

I know a lot of people on here really, really want to beleive that if you study and study and sweat and sweat you can make it, rather than writing being largely just a knack of talking, like telling a joke.

I've been through this before, listed authors who acheive huge success with no training, just told stories. I'm not going to go through it again.

Suffice to say, learning to be a writer has NOTHING in common with going through law or medicine school.

But I'm sick of that topic, and the topic in this thread is kar's writing.

No Sheila, she's not right. And you've seen a lot of evidence to the contrary. Writers don't have to go to school for a decade learn all sorts of complex material and past exams and all that and you know that.

I wouldn't even bring it up here again, except that it is a crappy thing to say to a young writer. It just is not true.

I guess it all depends on what the writer wants, JoElle. Perhaps you've achieved what you want from your writing, so whatever you do or don't do is okay for you. And that's wonderful.

However, the writers I know, who are published with the majors, have studied the craft, worked hard at it, and have invested as much time and effort as any doctor or attorney.

So again, it's what each writer wants from the profession. Some are satisfied with their achievements while others want more.

I'm happy that you enjoy what you do. One of my friends has the satisfaction of seeing her books on the B&N shelves, has successful signings and travels to the RWA conventions, but feels such pressure to complete the next contracted book that that she enjoys little else.

Again, it's all in what each writer wants. It sounds as if you have a good balance in your life, and that's wonderful.

Lin,

You are arguing with Brenda and saying the same thing as one another.

My husband is very highly qualified in Sports Science. He has seen hundreds of talented students in many different sports. The students who excelled in their sports -- played rugby for one of the national teams (England, Scotland, Wales), competed in the Commonwealth and Olympic Games -- and went on to be professional sportsmen, all had one thing in common. They wanted it more than the equally talented sportsmen and women who just missed out on that international cap or place in the Olympic team.

If Brenda succeeds and I don't, it won't be because Brenda is a better writer than me, it will be because she wants to succeed more than I do. I know I should attend workshops, sign up for creative writing classes and become a conference delegate. It isn't something I want to do. That doesn't mean I can't succeed but it does mean I am less likely to.

Brenda is putting herself where she needs to be to achieve what she has set out to achieve; I am not. The difference between me and other PA authors is that I want Brenda to succeed and I know that I don''t deserve to as much. In fact, I probably don't deserve to at all.

I can write. I can write well but the things I want to write about would not secure an offer from a publisher. I know what I should do to use my writing skills and put myself in a position, similar to Brenda's, where that might be possible. But I really don't want to do that. If there comes a time that I do, I know what needs to be done and I'll get on and do it.

For the moment, I'm quite happy doing what I'm doing.

You can run around all this all week... and HAVE IN THE PAST SEVERAL TIMES.

I said two things here, and they are hard to ooze around.

Number one: Writing does not take the same sort of preparation that law and medicine take. That is an incorrect statement. Which is to say, it's wrong. And further, is obviously, blatently, demonstrably wrong. That is what I said, and I'll stand behind and frankly anybody who argues against that has problems.
Also: it's a shitty thing to say to a young writer.

Number two: this thread is in books and was supposed to be seeking input on writing for this kid. He got almost nothing. Except some specious personal bashing.
I think all the "oh you can't just sit down and write a book just because somebody else did" shite should be curtailed or a new thread started (or one of the dozen others on the same topic rebirthed or whatever)

Although actually, kar, if he's smart has moved on to another forum by now.

Can anybody think of a good reason why a young writer should post anything for crit in this forum?

Ah, hell with it. Let's just move on to a nice little chat on Publish America.

Jesus

I know I should attend workshops, sign up for creative writing classes and become a conference delegate.

Why?

Forest Elf wrote:

We all know there are movie stars who can't act.
We all know there are superstar performers who can't sing.
We all know there are best selling books by authors who can't write.

If I became a bestselling author and had a reputation as a successful author who couldn't write, I would be genuinely crushed. If I don't succeed and someone, somewhere, sometime were to say that at least I wrote well, then I will have succeeded. That is all I ever set out to do.

You put that beautifully, Shelagh, and I totally agree.

Two writers in one of my former groups are published, one with a small pub and her books aren't in bookstores. It doesn't matter to her because she's thrilled to hold a book she'd written. The other writer wanted more, and years later, after more classes and study, she finally achieved it, with the fame and wealth that went with it.

Was one a better writer? Hard to say, but the major publishing world accepted the one over the other.

Yes, we all see the lousy actor in a hit movie as we see a writer making it big with a book. But usually, careers are built, and will we see those 'stars' in a successful follow-up? Sometimes, but more often that not, we don't.

Of course, if I made millions with one book, I don't know that I'd care about a follow-up. I'd be sitting near the ocean enjoying a nice daiquiri.

And yes Lin, we did get off-track with this thread.

And I don't think it's too harsh to let a young writer know about the publishing world. You have your opinion and I have mine.

lin wrote:

Let's just move on to a nice little chat on Publish America.

Nah, I don't think so.

Btw, did you consider yourself to be a young kid when you were a twenty-year-old? I didn't. If everything Kar222 is writing about is true, he's twenty going on forty at least.

And I don't think it's too harsh to let a young writer know about the publishing world. You have your opinion and I have mine.

If your opinion is that writers need to go through the same level or nature of education that lawyers and doctors do, then your opinion is worthless and does absolutely nothing to let anybody know anything about the publishing world.
It's not really even something there's any disagreement on. It's an indefensible statement. And now we've got a page of posts screwing around the edges of not admitting it. Great.

Good news is, I doubt kar even saw it or will miss the rest of his feedback thread turning into a manure pile.

Perhaps it is the social worker in me coming out, the old alcohol and other drug abuse professional, but kar needs to write this book, for himself. Many have said on this board, they write for themselves, at least part of the time.

I was somewhat fascinated by it. I never read the book about a man's drug addiction that turned out to not really be a true story, but others said it was with poor punctuation and formatting. And that one became a best seller and even on Oprah before the truth was known.

I believe that any activity one pursues, from writing, to music, to dance, and even to being a doctor, depends on both desire and some innate talent that can be enhanced through learning. A doctor can have all the knowledge and skill, but without a caring about people or looking on them as individuals or being able to put pieces of a puzzle together to find a diagnosis, he won't be as excellent a doctor as others.

So kar, keep writing. You might be surprised where this goes. The fact that you brought it here shows you need to tell this story.

Carol

Well, that's a very nice, different perspective on it.

So, kar, your request for help has opened up an age-old, insoluble question: Is writing a craft or an art? Members of this group have debated and argued this topic for a very long time.

If you have learned nothing else by now, it might be that, to deal with this issue, you need a clear head. It's hard to do that in a drug haze

I'll go back to my original advice: keep a journal. Write for yourself before you attempt to write for others. Find yourself in your journaling. It is one of the best theraputic tools I know of.

If you are interested in where I stand on that art/craft issue (you don't need to comment), it is much the same as my ex once said to some friends: "Ann takes a very strong stand on every issue that comes up - squarely straddling the middle of the fence." I don't think he intended it as a compliment, but I took it as one. I must have been Aristotle in an earlier life. Writing is a combination of art and craft. Finding the right balance of the two is what makes for success.

But back to journaling. When you journal, you don't have to worry about what anyone else thinks. You don't have to worry about spelling or commas or capital letters or periods or whether you language is offensive. You just let go. Angry with your parents? Write it out. Feeling trapped and out of control? Write it out. In a funky horse haze, write yourself through it. Trying to stay clean? You got it. While your head is clear, read what you wrote and write about that.

My opinion of the excerpts you posted is that they are not yet ready for readers other than yourself. But that is only my opinion.

Writing is part writer-directed, part reader directed, part art and part craft; the ones who are truly successful have found a way to balance it all.

Ann