Writers...

So, I have two friends who are self proclaimed writers. One friend, whom we’ll call Baron, graduated college with an English degree and a creative writing certificate (whatever that means), the other friend, whom we’ll call Kelvin, graduated with a marketing degree, but he took enough writing courses to qualify to…write a LOT. So, anyway, both of these friends have been trying to write books, short stories, whatever, and get it published. Their dream is to be the next big thing in fiction. I have another friend, ok I have a few more as well but none of the others are relevant to this story, anyway, I have another friend who is somewhat known as the playboy or ladies man, we’ll call him Kat. If you’re bored on a Saturday night, give this guy a call and meet up with him. You’re guaranteed a wild and crazy time. Anyway, this guy, like a literary ninja, just up and writes a 480 page novel. Out of nowhere! Bam! He didn’t tell anyone until he was over ¾ of the way done. He finished it and has started the editing and revision process. He has now gone through a couple of complete revisions and is close to publishing level now. He is currently shopping around for agents.
Well, as you might expect, this stirred up a world of shit with my two writer friends. I mean, how can this playboy non-writer write a book while they struggled with it for so long. I mean, the most they’ve ever written of their respective books is about 10 chapters or so. This guy just up and writes a full novel. What the hell, right? Ok. I mean, you can tell he’s not a trained writer from the writing itself. It didn’t flow all that well, he used some really odd words sometimes, and his dialog didn’t feel very natural. With each revision it gets better though. After another revision or two, he really will be at a publishing level with it. It’s amazing to me. It’s like this. Think of the one person who you would never ever think of writing a book. Not just someone who wouldn’t be capable, but someone who wouldn’t even be interested in writing a book. Now, imagine that they just up and tell you that they’ve been writing for a bit in secret and are now almost finished. That’s the shock I received.
Anyhow, the point of this story was to rant about how my “qualified” writer friends reacted to this, not to ramble on, which is what I’m doing.
So my two writer friend, Baron and Kelvin, they both immediately rip into the book as trash. Granted it had some problems, but it wasn’t trash as they had indicated. In defense of Kelvin, he didn’t rip into too hard, he did call it junk, but he said it wasn’t unsalvageable. Baron was another story though. He tore into it like a pit bull. He was cruel too. He told him that it was completely wrong, it was junk, and he should scrap the whole thing and start over from the beginning. He then offered to “teach” him how to write and then proceeded to send Kat what can only be described as homework. He asked him to write the first sentence of his book five different way and so on. As expected, Kat was insulted and hurt. He came to me to see if it was really as bad as Baron had said it was. I told him that it wasn’t and offered my help.
(wow this has gotten long. I’m going to wrap this up.)
I, being an adult college student, edited his book to the best of my ability without getting too crazy in the editing so that I changed the essence of his work. I think it’s much better. Kelvin has also stepped up and offered to help him with his dialog. As a quick note, although Kelvin has never finished a book himself, he is a master of dialog. He really does know how to put what feels like genuine dialog to paper. So, he’s going to help him get his dialog up to snuff. Everything seems to be working out for Kat, but he has declined any further offers from Baron. While Baron may claim to genuinely want to help him, his bedside manner needs some drastic improvement.