KILLING MISS POPE

KILLING MISS POPE Apr 4, 2019 17:16:09 GMT

Post by rockefeller on Apr 4, 2019 17:16:09 GMT

This author's cover letter, of which about 99.65% is bio, is not, as Rocks first suspected, longer than the submitted story. No, the cover letter/bio is only 3420 words whereas the submitted piece is 5425 words. Still, it's the longest CV Rocks has ever seen, and even includes links to the author's Amazon, Facebook, Linkedin, Goodreads and Google pages (but no Twitter?). This writer has had over 900 stories published since 2013. That rounds to 1.154 stories published per week for a period of 15 years! Seriously. Rocks had already almost completely lost interest in publishing. Now, for reasons not entirely clear, Rocks has decided to stop writing, maybe even reading. Maybe it's analogous to how meth might seem like a lot of fun and a really healthy and positive thing to do, until you actually see someone who's dedicated all their resources to it for many years. Or maybe Rocks is just jealous. In any case, it biased him heading into the read, and Rocks prefers to read with an open mind.

Rocks never had a teacher he wanted to kill until university, but he did, for reasons he won't whine about now, hate both his childhood dentist and orthodontist and, though he's never fantasized killing either of them, he does hope they both lived long long lives, as in way past their best-before dates.

As expected, the voice in this piece is tight, with nice use of vulgarity as a rhetorical device. Technically good (although there were a few places Rocks wouldn't have minded seeing hyphens). No stumbling. Fluid read. Never felt the urge to skim... or skip, anyway.

Also, as kind of expected, beyond the credible narrator and at times clever prose, there wasn't much story. No epiphanies. Nothing that this talented wordsmith seemed to have had to wrestle with or discover. The mocking of the mentally handicapped, while funny, made Rocks, who, as an erstwhile orderly in various nursing and retirement homes has known more than a few retarded persons, just a twitch uncomfortable. But that's not criticism. Maybe even the opposite. Good writing may disturb. The ending wasn't just anticlimactic (in a "let's wrap this thing up and fire it off" kind of way) but also, somehow, a little confusing. Like, he never did actually kill Miss Pope. She was already dead. So, at worst, he mutilated a cadaver. So, why the life prison sentence? Also, a "commode" is a fairly flimsy wheeled chair beneath which a bedpan is affixed. It is not something one would likely use to batter another with. More likely he would have used the bedpan, assuming it was of the stainless steel and not plastic variety, to bash her corpse.

Somewhat unexpected, and as Rocks' esteemed, hypothermic colleague has mentioned, it's not formatted correctly. Rocks hates William Shunn and his "standard manuscript format," maybe even more than the narrator here hates Miss Pope. Shunn's made submitting an even bigger pain in the ass than it already was. Still, for print, it's polite to indent paragraphs and double space. For screen you can single space, but separate paragraphs with blank lines. All it takes is a few clicks in Word. Even makes it easier for you to reread and edit and revise and rethink and retool and revisit and ... no.

Post by bulldust on Apr 3, 2019 16:07:55 GMT

Post by rockefeller on Apr 4, 2019 17:16:09 GMT