Faralas:
So, while you may feel the book that you've spent a year or two pouring your heart and soul into has potential for publication, you have to 'pitch' it to a publisher. It's called a synopsis.
Correct - and I may add, publishers are not always innovative either. Just remember Doris Lessing. She wrote a book under a pseudonym: The diary of Jane Somers. It was rejected - then a publisher finally published this book. When I read it, the author Jane Somers was unknown to me - I thought: Hey, that's the Doris Lessing style! Years after that, she admited and said, she wanted to prove the fact that publishers don't read the plot but go for names. It was a brilliant slap. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ROFL.gif" alt="" />
Kiya
So, writing is a dangerous act - you have to believe in your work, advert for it, fight for it - and grow skin.
WF, about "angst" => this is something a lot of teenagers go through during adolescence, it's "normal", now explained in biological psychology due to hormones running wild and affecting brains and emotions. Part of the painful path in finding your own personality, your way to adulthood. I often wondered why adults seem to shun literature dealing with this period. Maybe because it is too painful to remember what happened inside them as well? Or maybe because they are ashamed to be reminded of this?
A few years ago I found my poetry out of that time - and well, I cringed <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/delight.gif" alt="" /> - took me several approaches to overcome this blockade and remember what lead to these poems. And my last thought was: Whew, glad I survived <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/delight.gif" alt="" /> - I still think literature dealing with this can help teenies, so they don't feel so alone anymore. And it can help adults to be a bit more patient with an angsting teenager. As we survived this turbulent period, we might be able to transport this to a teenie then, who believes his inner state will never change.
What I really find problematic, is something I read in a lot of (German) teenie novels => too many probs in one book. Example => pregnancy, drugs, criminal boyfriend in the Skinhead scene, divorcing parents, eating disorder, dying pet dog, loneliness etc. All crammed together on 200 pages. I recall, I laughed my head off and tried to guess what would come next. But I read this as an adult, not as a teenie.
So, to bring this post back to the topic of writing => a consistent plot, concentrating on a few major quests/problems/tasks is better than to write a catastrophy book.
