Your vampire novel blows.

By Forkfoot · Aug 21, 2009 · 450 · 12
  1. No, I do not want to read the first 2½ chapters of that insipid vampire novel you’re writing. It is not good, it is not original.

    “But F.F.,” you may say, “this vampire novel is totally different from any vampire novel you‘ve ever-” No no! No. Not good. Not original.

    Get that vampire novel away from me. Get that vampire novel away from me, I said. In a few years, you’ll regret all the time you spent on it anyway.

    Don’t believe me? Let’s try this:
    Why don’t you take your totally awesome, totally original vampire novel, and put it on a shelf for a while.
    Then, get on a train.
    Doesn’t matter where to.
    In fact, it’s better if you don’t know.
    Get off in the first big city you come to and get a bad job in a bad part of town.
    Live in an even worse part of town.
    With someone who’s totally different from you.
    Ideally, they won’t even speak your language.
    Learn their language.
    Fall in love.
    Not the kind of romance you see in the movies, either.
    Let it be real.
    Have fights.
    Throw stuff.
    Toss furniture out the window.
    Go on depressed coke binges and sell the TV.
    Have passionless sex.
    Break up.
    Break up six or seven times.
    Go and live on the streets.
    Breathe your city’s air.
    Suck in its soul.
    Spend a month living under a bridge writing poems from your heart and throwing them in the water.
    Spend another month fasting and meditating till your barriers pop and the starlight sounds like a hurricane.
    Rip open your chest and let the Universe in.
    Ask big questions.
    Resolve to find out who you are.
    Fail.
    Join a convent or a monastery.
    Fail there, too.
    Watch someone die.
    Get addicted to something.
    Let it take over your life and damn near kill you.
    Feel it.
    Feel it all.
    Go home.
    Pick up the totally awesome, totally original vampire novel you were working on, and read everything you’ve written, from beginning to end.

    If you still feel like finishing it, then I’d be glad to have a look.

    Or, if you prefer, we could burn it, scatter the ashes to the four winds, and go dancing with the gods.
    We’ll run out to the sea, and I’ll show you the hammerhead whales.
    I’ll make you a crown of exotic feathers and a necklace of human hands.
    Words will spill from our throats, and we’ll play in language like a gargoyle garden.
    Or we could kill each other.
    Or whatever.

    You’re so young.

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  1. Rumpole40k
    My Grandfather once looked at me (I don't remember what I said to start him off) and said, "You haven't sinned hard enough or failed bad enough to have an opinion yet". I think he'd like your blog.
    Rumpole40k, Aug 21, 2009
  2. Forkfoot
    That's a badass thing to say. Your grandfather was bad ass.
    Forkfoot, Aug 21, 2009
  3. Speedy
    A beyound wicked Blog.

    Wanted to live every word, but the misses is stubborn and refuses grand adventures these days. Outside of the house anyway.
    Speedy, Aug 21, 2009
  4. Nobeler Than Lettuce
    Funny. Makes feel glad to have lived.

    Vampires still kick ass why you gotta hate?

    Heh.
    Nobeler Than Lettuce, Aug 21, 2009
  5. Nobeler Than Lettuce
    This is the men with scary faces channel, and a baby in the middle.

    Agreed. Quoted for truth. Etc.
    Nobeler Than Lettuce, Aug 21, 2009
  6. jonathan hernandez13
    For F#@% Sake...put the vampire novel #@%* to death!

    -If you are saying that all literature must be borne from individuals who are fully matured or worldy or enlightened I do not necessarily agree.

    -I believe in art for art's sake, anyone who has learned a language has the right to write, no one should ever have to justify or defend anything of theirs. It just is, and so are we.

    -There is even a good side to this whole vampire novel horse crap. Whenever people are reading it's a good thing, especially for writers, cos they buy our crap. Also, with books dying due to rapid electronic entertainment, whatever spark of interest they (teeny bopper goth girls, middle aged women in middle aged angst, grown women with arrested development? I don't see their fascination with sappy young adult fiction; with folkloric monsters doubly so) have should be encouraged and fueled before it atrophies from our society like an atavistic limb.

    That being said I thought your blog was awesome for two reasons.

    1)Epic post, great narrative in itself, a mini-story really, and I completely agree with what I think you're driving at.

    2)I am absolutely filled to the brim with hatred and disgust with all the vampire "stuff" I see. I feel like my eyes have been washed in feces whenever I go to the book stores and see articially erotic covers with pale skinned gothic romantics with crimson hued canines embracing each other. Barf. It's not just riding piggy back on the success of another (even Meyer benefitted from the success of Rice), its blatant commercialism at its ugliest, exploiting the drivel pushers and their "fans".

    ROFL @ the two angry men with baby in the middle ref.
    jonathan hernandez13, Aug 21, 2009
  7. Wreybies
    Thank the gods that I am not the only one who has had their fill of little anime-eyed children hugging their bloodless bloodsucker magnum opus to their frail chests as that giant sweat drop forms and slides down the side of their head. (What does that sweat drop even mean? Cryptic.)

    Anywho... yes, yes, and yes.
    Wreybies, Aug 21, 2009
  8. Xeno
    All I shall say: F-ing A.
    Xeno, Aug 21, 2009
  9. marina
    LOL. I used to resemble that comment ;)
    marina, Aug 22, 2009
  10. Blue-Ruvy
    I think I've finally found where I belong in the world...(*tears of happiness pour down cheeks*)
    Thankyou for mentioning Anne Rice, whose vampire novels are actually unique, and thankyou for being over the commercialisation of vampires.
    Society has ruined what was once a wonderful and eerie legend, by turning it into mills and boons for teenagers.
    I feel so close to you guys! :p
    Blue-Ruvy, May 5, 2010
  11. Eoz Eanj
    Pretty much. It's kind of like a girl I used to know. She was a devote Christian, lived in a sheltered world, surrounded by crucifixes, two loving parents and dinner-at-the table every night at 6pm. If you took the Lord's name in vane around her or her family, they'd by near burst into tears. She went to Church every Sunday, and prayed before her Lunch and Recess at school.

    Yeah, I guess I found it ironic when she started to write her own vampire novel.
    Eoz Eanj, May 26, 2010
  12. Chris Lindsay
    I loved your comment on the whole Vampire thing. There's a fantasy bookshop in Sydney called Galaxy. They used to be pretty good, but now they have ONE WHOLE WALL dedicated to "Paranormal romance". I understand romance novels. I've never read one, but I understand the genre, the (perversely) "ideal" man exists between the pages and if that's the closest women can get to him then so be it. We all have an idea for the unatainable - but to make him undead is just too much. To fall in love with something that doesn't exist is just ridiculous. This stuff is for teenager girls who haven't gotten over unicorns. However, I am a highschool English teacher and I agree with Johnathan Hernandez that anything that gets them reading is a good thing. In one of those comedy chain emails i saw the following: Dear Twilight fans, Vampires are dead. They have no blood pumping through their veins. They cannot get an erection. Try fantasising about that! Signed, logic
    Chris Lindsay, Mar 19, 2011
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