Running on Empty

This is why we can’t have nice things:

This ad has been running in my Facebook feed since I joined a couple of writers’ groups. Fifteen minutes a day — think of that! And you can write your best-seller on your phone! If you go to the website (I dare you), what you’ll find is a beautifully crafted sales pitch that reveals absolutely nothing about what’s in the app. The entire pitch is aimed at people who wouldn’t know good advice on writing fiction if it jumped up and sank its teeth into their butt.

The main reason this is worth complaining about is that clueless wannabe writers are sucked into thinking they can get somewhere with this kind of idiocy. They then go out and write a “novel” that nobody but their mother could love, and upload it to Amazon. Or spam dozens of long-suffering literary agents with it.

The publishing pipeline is clogged with the effluvia produced by writers who think they’re going to get somewhere with a system like this. And what’s just as bad, some readers will buy their work and read it, and not see that it’s bad! The taste of the reading public is being degraded. We would all be better off if nobody encouraged these people to try writing novels.

I’m seeing ads for AutoCrit too. AutoCrit is more ambitious, and on that account more to be excoriated. If you select the fantasy page in AutoCrit, you’ll be told, “When you become an AutoCrit member, you gain access to an exclusive and powerful feature – the ability to compare your work to books by some of the most successful fantasy authors of all time.” Yes, they’re claiming their software will produce a meaningful comparison between your hopeless drivel and the work of George R. R. Martin.

AutoCrit claims to “remove the frustration from the editing process.” Unfuckingbelievable.