I recently decided to do a major revision on my early books, a decision a decade in coming, but my writing has improved drastically since then and I want all my writing to shine, not just my latest books, but part of me felt like I was desecrating something sacred, but they need attention so bad! No changes to the overall story, just smoothing out the choppiness, fleshing out characters and dialogue, and removing bald statements of the obvious, ugh! Interestingly enough, I found a nice little article on a promising author and found one of her books at the library, hoping I had found Jane Austen's heiress at last, only to find the same problem in her writing as afflicts my own!
Most of my trouble with Jane Austen-wanna-bes is that most are little more than trashy romance novels wearing an Austen cover, though I would love to hear Miss Austen's comments on her so-called successors! The book I read was neat, clean, and okay. I wish I could call it great or even good, but it had no sparkle, no depth, no lure to draw me deep and skip two nights of sleep to find out what happens; the characters were shallow and uninteresting, there was a lot of promise but we only skimmed the surface and hastened on to the next plot point without pausing to experience the moment we were in, to explore the nuance and depth of personality and experience and what happens when they collide. It felt like a chick flick on paper sans the trashy romance. But there is promise, there are ideas there, that if developed and deepened, with a little practice, could yield wonderful fruit. I can say the same about my early books. It is young author syndrome. And the cure is time and experience, both on an authorial and a personal level.
Write, write, and write some more. Don't forget to read and read and read again. And grow, especially as a person, your characters can't have more depth than the one who writes them, so deepen and expand your own character and thereby your fictional ones too! I couldn't write like I write now back then because I was a shallow, two dimensional figure myself, only in discovering myself, the deepest corners of my haunted soul, could I become both the person and writer I should be. Now, as a better, deeper person and writer, I'm going to attempt to go back and add depth and wit and whimsy to my original works. I can't wait to see what this particular author develops into, there is a lot of promise there, but it is merely hinted at in the book I read, but the seeds of greatness are there!
I think that is why modern people content themselves with trashy romance novels: there is no need for plot, character, or any talent at writing whatsoever, like our modern culture, we live for the moment, the now, for me, for the cheap thrill and shallow relationship. But this young lady is not settling for that, and it will be exciting to see her continuing development!
