So over this past weekend I read through each of my submissions. Some of them were okay and well one I refused to accept and work with the guy on editing. It was really just awful. The five others were all pretty good. Only three needed full rewrites which I told the authors why, one was too dialect heavy for my taste, the other needed something brought to the forefront much earlier and the last just had a lot of filler that didn't need to be there. If she doesn't take it out then I think I just will. The other pieces just need some editing stuff which is fine by me.
I was really surprised by how different each of the pieces were though. All of them fit the theme but in different ways and I loved that about reading them. The Cubana is a great piece about a Mexican wedding and the guy being obsessed with his cousins ex-wife and The Wrong Side of Candyland is an awesome piece of flash fiction about the seedy underbelly of Candyland. I also got a great flash fiction piece about a bum on the El. Only one piece that was written seemed like, "here take this just because you asked me and I'm being nice," and I told that author that it needed a rewrite.
Now, onto the Kelly Link interview.
I love what she said about fantasy writing and the quote she used by John Updike. The idea that everything needs to be realistic is ingrained in us as Americans and it tends to be what the American public enjoys. So why can't a story about pirates with magic maps and rejuvenating treasure be just as good as that? I feel like sometimes we take ourselves too seriously and don't have enough fun and that's why fantasy has such a terrible label placed on it.
I also feel that same way she does about being a literary writer. I don't really like to call myself that either. I just write, whatever comes to mind and I write it. In a way she's saying the same thing even though she'd rather be called a science fiction writer. I definitely agree with her saying that people are almost afraid of the genre books and I don't really understand why. I thought reading was about Immersing oneself in a different world. So why do Science Fiction and Fantasy have such a stigma about them? I don't really get it. My favorite book of all time is Peter Pan and in essence it's a fantasy story, but why is that such a bad thing? I love it. I love reading about things that couldn't possible happen but seem like they could. That's what Kelly Link is saying to me. Read these outlandish stories because what else is there? Writing fiction is about engaging the imagination.
I feel like Kelly is talking to me in this interview especially when she mentions her fear of boring people or that writers get stuck using particular themes or types of characters. I know that I do that for a fact and that I tend to enter my comfort zone and stay there. I've recently been trying to break that I definitely understand where she's coming from with this statement. I'm always afraid that something I've written isn't engaging or has no real moment that the reader gets hooked on the story. I don't think that fear ever ends, and hearing that from Kelly Link tells me that it really doesn't.
"Writer's should lead quiet boring lives, but be sure to have friends with interesting and difficult ones." I'm not going to say that my life is boring or quiet, but this completely makes sense. Most of the time I prefer to stay home and just watch a movie. I'd rather not go to a club, bar or party, when I'm home I just want to watch T.V with my parents or visit my grandfather with my mom. Kelly Link takes details of her friends lives and uses them in her stories, making them grander and more fanatical. I believe that all writers do that just not in the same capacity that she does. She creates a fantasy world out of real happens. Autobiographical points in a story make them something better then just having them be completely fiction, for me anyway and to know that even though Kelly writes strange, awkward and completely out there fiction but draws from real life makes me adore her writing even more.
What Kelly says about writing YA fiction makes total sense. I wouldn't like to be talked down to or to be lectured. I didn't like it when I was fifteen and I'm sure I didn't like it as a kid. I also have to agree that in order to write a book for a certain age group of readers you have to go back and remember everything about what it was like to be that age. I think those are the best YA books. The ones that tap into that time in the author's life even though they might be telling a vampire story or something like that.
Kelly Link made so many good points in this interview, so many things that really got to me as a writer, things that I do or don't do, or things that I even think about. As I read it I was going "Oh yeah, yes I know what you mean." She was dead on with almost everything she said. I actually want to read more of her work as well as some more interviews.
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