A horde of termites scuttled up and down Night Beetle's spine as the Parasitique priests hoisted him against the wet wood of the crucifix. With hammers and nails composed of chitin, the Parasitiques spiked the entomancer's hands and feet to the rotten cross. Submerged to the groin in the filthy swampwater, yet dangling a few feet above the bottom of the marsh, Night Beetle's chest collapsed and he began to asphyxiate. Death by crucifixion, however, was not the fate the Parasitique priests desired for the Pestilante shaman. With ropes composed of silk and mucus they tied his wrists, neck, torso, and ankles to the wood, trussing his half-conscious body to the crosspiece and immobilizing his shoulders and chest to prevent suffocation. A Parasitique wearing a gigantic, wooden flea's-head mask stepped forward.

My only concern in the 1st 13 was: "was not the fate the Parasitique priests desired for the Pestilante shaman."

The tone strikes me as melodramatic. Also, I think I'd rather savor the ambiance than worry about what a Pestilante shaman is, right now. Consider trimming it to something like "was not what the Parasitique priests had in mind / wanted."

You don't say whether you're looking for crits of the whole piece. If you are - and you're not in a tearing hurry - I'll read.

A horde of termites scuttled up and down Night Beetle's spine as the Parasitique priests hoisted him against the wet wood of the crucifix. With hammers and nails composed of chitin, the Parasitiques spiked the Pestilante shaman's hands and feet to the rotten cross. Submerged to the groin in the filthy swampwater, yet dangling a few feet above the bottom of the marsh, Night Beetle's chest collapsed and he began to asphyxiate. The Parastiques quickly trussed his half-conscious body to the crosspiece with ropes of silk and mucus, immobilizing his shoulders and chest to prevent suffocation. A Parasitique priest wearing a wooden flea's-head mask stepped forward. He was holding an elaborate, tubular device in his left hand that looked like a hybrid of giant centipedes and translucent bladders.

[This message has been edited by Brant Danay (edited February 14, 2009).]

A horde of termites scuttled up and down Night Beetle's spine as the Parasitique priests hoisted him against the wet wood of the crucifix. With hammers and nails composed of chitin, the Parasitiques spiked the Pestilante shaman's hands and feet to the rotten cross. Submerged to the groin in the filthy swampwater, yet dangling a few feet above the bottom of the marsh, Night Beetle's chest collapsed and he began to suffocate. The Parastiques quickly trussed his half-conscious body to the crosspiece with ropes of silk and mucus, immobilizing his shoulders and chest to prevent asphyxiation. A Parasitique priest wearing a wooden flea's-head mask stepped forward. He was holding an elaborate, tubular device in his left hand that looked like a hybrid of giant centipedes and translucent bladders.

Best regards,

you elsewhere described yourself as a "neologist." There's nothing wrong with that except that it is possible to overdo it, particularly at the outset. You've provided us with three different descriptors for your MC; why so many? Are you trying to impress us with your ability to coin new words, or do they convey actual information?

Put simply: they look pretentious.

One of the problems with SF as a genre is that there are too many mediocre attempts at the craft that are window-dressed with clever words. As a reader, I find it off-putting if I think an author is trying to dazzle me too soon. Think about it: you could write a paragraph describing your wife reverse-parking the car at the supermarket, then replace a few words with whiz-bangs, and you'd have a starfighter pilot doing close-quarters maneuvers at Starbase 79. But would the one story really be better than the other?

What makes good SF is *exactly the same* as what makes good writing in *any* genre. You need believable characters with whom your readers can identify. You need a conflict to create interest in the story. You need uncertainty as to the outcome. And you need to use *words that evoke either images or emotions in the reader.* As someone once pointed out, Shakespeare didn't go in for pretentious language. For instance, he didn't say "males of advanced age show progressive deterioration of the recollective faculty," he said "old men forget."

All that said: the crucifixion image is an arresting one, and a great hook. I'd keep reading, if I didn't have to plough through too many pretentious neologisms.

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What makes good SF is *exactly the same* as what makes good writing in *any* genre. You need believable characters with whom your readers can identify. You need a conflict to create interest in the story.

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I'm not sure why your using the term SF here, since this isn't science fiction...but I know people some times use that as a blanket term.

Anyway..."good" is subjective, and "good" writing in any genre doesn't necessarily require a whole lot of ALL the things you mention. Some readers don't need a character they can "identify" with...I, for instance, don't necessarily need one. And the same is true of others...there are stories whose primary characters are so strange/evil/whatever that most people won't be able to identify with them. I can be drawn in as much by setting as by characters.

And you don't mention setting at all, something that, for me, is generally very important for my vision of a "good" story.

That being said, I realize current trends are pretty strongly "character oriented" and discourage use of intricate or outre description. But thats a trend...not everyone or everything.

I think Rob's referring to the neologisms rather than any Gothic/literary writing sensibility, however. On that level, I agree. I dislike both 'Parasitique' and 'Pestilante'. At least, at this point. Maybe bringing one of both of them in later would work, but not yet. Also the lexical conditions for such neologisms to arise would have to feel right, too. Say, if the Parasitique culture had a French flavour.

Being a devout logophile I am ethically bound to utilize the English language in its entirety during my artistic trances. Just as creativity is the cross-breeding of memories and experiences, a story is a recombination of pre-existing words and letters. If the same words keep being rearranged over and over, mental stagnation and ennui ensue. The more individual words used, the more psychedelic the entire piece. It's like the difference between a painting with ten colors, and a painting with a thousand, or a million, or a googol colors. It's not a matter of replacing complex and obscure words with more common synonyms, either, because no two words have the exact same meaning. Being a devout logophile also means that I want to be an active participant in the natural progression, evolution, and expansion of languages. Thus, my penchant for neologism. It's addictive. It's fun. And it's necessary.

As Merlion alluded to, one of my primary influences is H.P. Lovecraft. An even greater influence is one of his contemporaries, Clark Ashton Smith. When I first read the works of Clark Ashton Smith as a child, I was as bewildered by his verbosity as some people are by mine. I didn't get irritated. I didn't get annoyed. I didn't put the book aside and replace it with something simpler. I was jealous. I wanted his vocabulary for my own. I later learned that he gained some of his verbosity by reading an entire dictionary from cover to cover. I did the same, and I wrote down every word I fell in love with, and memorized each and every one of them. In addition to this, when I began reading voraciously as a child, I did so with an unabridged dictionary and an encyclopedia of mythology on the bed next to me. They were my constant companions, and every time I came across a word I was unfamiliar with, I looked it up. These are the reasons I have no patience for people who complain about verbosity, or want me to cater to the voids in their vocabularies and erudition. I'm not here to spoon-feed the masses.

I do not write science fiction and I never will. The same goes for horror, or any other established genre. I have created my own genre and entitled it "Phantasmagoria". In addition to H.P. Lovecraft and his contemporaries, my style/genre is very heavily influenced by comic books and animation, which some of you have noticed, and I always endeavor to christen my characters with descriptive names, the same way characters in comics and cartoons are christened. I am also heavily influenced by poetry, and aspire for my works to have the intensity, floridy, and verbosity of my favorite poets. I do not dabble in the mundane, I do not follow formulas, and I do not conform to bull**** trends, fads, and taboos. One of my goals as an author is to kick ass with every single sentence. Another one of my goals is to be unique enough that people will be able to read my material without knowing who wrote it-be it a novel, poem, short story, chapter, paragraph, or even a single sentence-and say "That's a Danay", the same way people can say "That's a Picasso" or "That's an H.R. Giger" just by looking at one of their paintings. I'm an individual.

Style is as important as plot, perhaps even more so, given the fact that there are only a finite number of plots, and they have been used repeatedly for millennia. The only thing that makes me put a book down is boredom. You can have "the greatest plot in the world", but if it's set in modern-day Chicago and involves "realistic" people and "realistic situations" and uses the same words over and over and over, then I just don't care.

Obviously, I have an interest in things like publication, notoriety, and honing my works to perfection with the assistance of other writers. I wouldn't bother with things like Hatrack if I didn't. However, I'm not willing to compromise my visions in order to attain these goals. Things like sympathetic characters, eliciting emotions in the reader, and other anthropomorphic and anthropocentric aspects of writing and storytelling are meaningless to me. I personally only identify with antiheroes, bad-ass mother****ers, monsters, and demons. I love Batman, Conan, and Elric. I don't care about Luke Skywalker, but when Darth Vader pussied out at the end of "Return of the Jedi" and died I was miserable. When the Xenomorph in "Alien" failed to kill Ripley and was itself destroyed, I was pissed off. And I first saw those movies at the ages of ten and six, respectively. My character designs are a reflection of my natural preferences.

I'm too misanthropic to care about impressing, dazzling, or alienating other people. People don't have to like my writing. Given the modern state of literature and the monkey**** littering the shelves of bookstores and cluttering the bestseller lists, I'd actually prefer that most of them don't. Writing is an art. To a true artist, creative writing is not a popularity contest, it's not a means of peer acceptance, it's not a means of social networking, it's not a get-rich-quick scheme, and it's not a job. It's a way of life. And it's my way of life.

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I think Rob's referring to the neologisms rather than any Gothic/literary writing sensibility, however. On that level, I agree. I dislike both 'Parasitique' and 'Pestilante'. At least, at this point. Maybe bringing one of both of them in later would work, but not yet. Also the lexical conditions for such neologisms to arise would have to feel right, too. Say, if the Parasitique culture had a French flavour.

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So...basically your saying that even though its fantasy fiction, its bad to make up new words?

That just seems odd to me. Of course I've encountered a lot of things I find odd and often a bit surprising from people who read/write speculative fiction.

Having lots of unusual/made-up words in an opening is risky because the reader doesn't know what it means. You want to delay full comprehension, but not confuse the reader. It's like saying:

'Something is happening to something and you won't know till you've got into my story, and then something else will happen because of someone called something else and then something else will come about as a result of it all.'

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Instead try to be a bit more concrete in your opening, so the reader can position him or herself in your fictional world and feel for the hero. If the reader can do neither because s/he doesn't know what you're talking about, s/he will probably not read further. An editor will be even less forgiving.

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You (but your not the only one) don't get it. I know this isn't my thread, but I get similar responses a lot.

I realize this isn't what you mean, but what it comes across as...and kind of literally is...is "make this into a different kind of story than it is if your want it to be published."

What I am saying, and what Brant said above is 1) your generalizing..not all readers or editors are solely interested in character-oriented, or specfically character oriented where the chatracter is one you can "feel" for (as in sympathize or identify with) 2) either way, this isn't that type of story. Maybe that means it wont get published. But if thats what you like to write, what is the point of writing what you dont want to write just to (maybe) make it more saleable? then its just a job.

thank you for your "Artist's Statement." Please keep in mind, though, that someone randomly browsing in a bookstore isn't going to read through that. They are going to pick up your book and glance at the first page. Please don't be offended by that fact; it's not about you, any more than my comment was about you. It's about the way readers go about deciding what books to buy. We don't rely very much on jacket blurbs, because they are just advertising; and we can't read the whole book to decide if we like it, because the shop assistants get testy.

And this, IIRC, is the whole point of the "First 13."

So you put your first 13 out there, and asked for feedback. I presumed, perhaps incorrectly, that you wanted honest feedback. Was I wrong? Surely you were not simply looking for sighs of admiration?

I am only one reader; you need not suppose that failing to appeal to me says anything about you as a writer. The only question is whether you want to appeal to readers like me in your First 13. If you don't, then by all means ignore me.

You like to coin new words. Good for you. Few writers, if any, have ever managed to coin more words than J. R. R. Tolkien: he invented entire languages. Yet if you look at his first 13, you won't find any of his neologisms except for the name "Bilbo Baggins."

He writes as if he has nothing to prove. I admire that.

You wrote:

"These are the reasons I have no patience for people who complain about verbosity, or want me to cater to the voids in their vocabularies and erudition. I'm not here to spoon-feed the masses."

You mistake me, sir; your presumption of superiority is unfounded. Your writing found no void in either my vocabulary or my erudition; I was not stumped by any of your latinisms. I know what a parasite is, what a pestilence is, and that words ending in -mancer denote a conjurer. I merely found it somewhat off-putting that you threw no less than three coined words at me in the space of thirteen lines. The only error I made was in supposing that you were describing an alien race, since they had chitinous technology, and hence that you were writing SF. That's because chitin is the material of which the exoskeletons of arthropods are composed, you see. You'd have to grind up an awful lot of ants to get enough chitin to make one nail, whereas human-sized arthropods would yield a whole lot more of the stuff.

You will, no doubt, consider my error to be entirely my fault; perhaps it is. But writing is first of all a form of communication, and so you might want to consider how effectively you communicate your ideas.

I recently submitted my complete novel manuscript to an editor for assessment. I got back nine pages of detailed critique, which I am still working through. In a number of places, it is entirely clear that he wasn't seeing what I was attempting to convey. I could have chosen to dismiss him as a grovelling philistine who was simply incapable of understanding my greatness; I suspect that's what you might have done. However, I chose instead to consider that each time I look at my manuscript I see what is already present in my mind, whereas when anyone else looks at it, they see only the words I have managed to write. Therefore, if I want others to see, through the imperfect words, the perfect vision that is in my mind, then I need to make my words convey something. And it needs to be something more meaningful than "I'm smarter than you."

I have been writing computer software for most of my adult life; and in that odd niche endeavour lies the key to my world view as a writer. For the software developer cannot afford to be narcissistic; everything he writes is for others. So I can slave away for hours a day, months on end, to produce something which is intricate, elegant and yet complex, and hand it over, with justifiable pride, to the user, and then half an hour later have her come back to me with the old refrain: "It's just what I asked for--but it's not what I want!" And so I have to go back and change my masterpiece.

This is an enormously useful discipline, because it means that I have learned not to invest my ego in how my writing is received. And I feel I am a better writer for it.

One of the few writers who can justly claim to have been a true artist was Joseph Conrad. The preface to his book, The Nigger of the Narcissus is actually an essay on what he called "The Condition of Art." I would recommend it to any writer who aspires to be an artist. Here is an excerpt that would seem to relate to what you have said:

"All art, therefore, appeals primarily to the senses, and the artistic aim when expressing itself in written words must also make its appeal through the senses, if its highest desire is to reach the secret spring of responsive emotions. It must strenuously aspire to the plasticity of sculpture, to the colour of painting, and to the magic suggestiveness of music—which is the art of arts. And it is only through complete, unswerving devotion to the perfect blending of form and substance; it is only through an unremitting never-discouraged care for the shape and ring of sentences that an approach can be made to plasticity, to colour, and that the light of magic suggestiveness may be brought to play for an evanescent instant over the commonplace surface of words: of the old, old words, worn thin, defaced by ages of careless usage."

I suggest that "the secret spring of responsive emotions" is best reached by words that evoke, not that merely impress. I vividly remember the first time I noticed the apparent cognitive conceit Tolkien used with many "commonplace" words. For example, "terrible" and "awful" are words that have been overused beyond the point of banality; yet Tolkien, quite unobtrusively, managed to restore them to their pristine glory. They are words that convey power and awe, not a badly-cooked steak.

So we come back to my original observation about your first 13: the crucifixion scene is a great hook; but the number of coined words still looks like an attempt to impress me, and I find that distracting, if not off-putting.

Merlion-Emrys wrote:

"I realize this isn't what you mean, but what it comes across as...and kind of literally is...is 'make this into a different kind of story than it is if your want it to be published.'"

How about: make it exactly the same kind of story, but work the extra-clever words in along the way, instead of showing off up front.

I realize the main purpose of Hatrack is to hone your first thirteen lines to maximum effectiveness in the attempt to achieve publication, and that there are certain guidelines which have been postulated and time-tested to increase these odds. I also realize that Hatrack is intended for science fiction and fantasy readers and writers. While my material does, by definition, fall under the broad umbrella of "fantasy", I realize that it is very avant-garde and is a very dark form of fantasy which is frequently mistaken for horror. My space operas are also frequently mistaken for science fiction, because of the pervasive stereotype that all stories set in space, on other planets, or across the entire cosmos are automatically SF. Having said that, I am well aware of the fact that I don't really fit in here, and that I am far less concerned with being published than other writers. So, in those respects, I am circumventing the spirit of Hatrack. If everyone would prefer that I just fade back into the darkness from whence I came, I will willingly and graciously do so. My reasons for maintaining a presence here are, quite simply, because I need the feedback, and I don't find it anywhere else. And yes, honest and brutal feedback are perfectly welcome. I am not attempting to write mainstream SF or fantasy, though, or mainstream anything, for that matter. So, I can see where this gets misconstrued when I post something avant-garde, and, yes, I often lose sight of the fact that this is a workshop for mainstream speculative fiction. My main influences include Michael Moorcock, Clive Barker, Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft, William Hope Hodgson, William S. Burroughs, Marquis de Sade, Arthur Rimbaud, comic books, poetry, hentai, anime, cartoons, and heavy metal lyrics. These writers and types of art are probably not among the favorites of many Hatrackers. Maybe I don't belong here at all. I'm not sure.

My frustration with complaints about verbosity, as I alluded to in my previous post, are the facts that I started reading at the age of five, and when I did so I looked up every single word I came across that I didn't know. Years later, I read an entire dictionary from cover to cover and wrote the definition of every word I liked, which I have since typed into a file and printed in its 200+ page entirety. This was not a small, abridged dictionary that I read. This was a Webster's Unabridged Dictionary which was over 2100 pages in length, with three columns of words to a page. The process took weeks. The simple fact of the matter is that I busted my ass to attain the vocabulary I possess, and when people complain or get annoyed when I use a word they don't know, it pisses me off. In the same amount of time it takes them to bitch and moan about it, they could have looked the word up in their dictionary, an encyclopedia of mythology, or, nowadays, on the internet. I've had a woman literally get angry with me for using words like amphisbenic and ophidian, because she didn't know what they meant and felt they had no place in any story by anyone at any time. I learned these two words from Clark Ashton Smith, and I can recollect, offhand, that H.P. Lovecraft has used the word ophidian as well. I have come under fire for using the word transmogrify, which I learned in a Michael Moorcock book. So, obviously, you can understand my frustrations. Lesser known contemporaries of Lovecraft, such as A. Merritt and M.P. Shiel, also had me opening the dictionary every few minutes. The poetry which I so love and is another of my main influences sometimes lists Greek gods and mythical locations by the scores. My first journeys through those books included a ton of visits to both my dictionary and to my encyclopedia of mythology. Therefore, I feel justified in the use of these terms, and I've got my idols to back me up.

My intention was not to come off like an artiste who feels he's tragically misunderstood by the world. I am arrogant, vain, proud, confident, and yes, even narcissistic, but I’m not a delusional megalomaniac and I am well aware of the fact that I need a TON of assistance with things like clarity and continuity, and am completely incapable of establishing and perceiving boundaries. I have seen how much my works can be improved with the help of others, and, like other Hatrackers, that's why I'm here and I am extremely grateful to everyone who participates on this website. I have stated that one of my basic philosophies as a writer is "to kick ass with every sentence", and attempted to do so by amplifying the styles of my main influences to as extreme a degree as possible. This philosophy has backfired more than I ever would have imagined, and my works are generally considered to be overdone, and have even been labeled as "incoherent raving" on one occasion. I'm still trying to find the proper balance. There are, however, a few popular aspects of writing that I do not care for and do not implement. There are even some which, for various reasons, I am completely incapable of incorporating. Some of these things include psychology, eliciting emotions, and creating sympathetic characters. Not only do I not write like other people, I don't read like other people. I don't question the author while I'm reading, and I never have issues with things like believability, characterization, or continuity. Some of you may have noticed that my critiques never mention any of these things. To me, reading is a psychedelic experience. I enjoy, for lack of a better term, "tripping out" on words. This is why I prefer poetry, descriptive imagery, and purple prose to straight narratives, good plotlines and an abundance of character development and/or dialogue. I know I will never be a bestselling author, and perhaps will never be published in any capacity whatsoever, but I will always love writing and have an intense desire to make my works the best they can possibly be. As different as I am, my motivations in this regard are the same as other Hatrackers, and I appreciate the feedback of each and every one of you, no matter its content or nature.

Anyways, I hope I have been able to further clarify my "Artist's Statement" with this response, and effectively communicate the fact that I bear no one on Hatrack ill will at any time, nor do I feel that I am better than anyone.

Best regards to everyone,

Brant

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I realize the main purpose of Hatrack is to hone your first thirteen lines to maximum effectiveness in the attempt to achieve publication, and that there are certain guidelines which have been postulated and time-tested to increase these odds.

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Best regards,

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Where does it say that is the main purpose of Hatrack?

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It doesn't. However, for various reasons...I think the fact that we can only post 13 lines here is one factor...there does seem to be a VERY strong focus here on the concept of the first 13 and on trying to "perfect" those first few lines into the most (supposedly) saleable hook possible.

This despite the fact that the idea that all or even most editors etc only read the first 13 lines of manuscripts is largely antiquated. We just can't post more than that in this forum.

There also, some times, seems to be a vein of trying to write material, and in a style that is seen as the most saleable or the easiest to publish.

I really sympathize with a lot of what Brant says...some times it does feel difficult here on Hatrack to get some types and styles of material critiqued within their own context as creative works, rather than in the context of how to make them as saleable as possible within the percieved trends of current professional speculative fiction.

Not everyone on Hatrack necessarily aspires to being a professional writer (as in making their living off of it) and even some who do may not be interested in doing so by means of changing their work to be as saleable as possible (or at least a percption thereof), rather than by writing what they want to write.

For my part I see this forum as a place to find resources and opinions and to improve ones skills as a writer and a storyteller...but honestly I do some times feel like those things take a back seat to other more specific goals.

Does Hatrack in fact have a specific stated purpose or purposes?

Edited to add: I think people get so used to coming directly to the forum pages that they forget about that page and what it says about what we're doing here.

Maybe I should post it in the Please Read Here First area as well.

If one person pointed that out, that would be fine. The fact that a number of posters have pointed it out suggests the flaw is not with the readers but with the writing. You can still use your made-up words, but work them in later, where more appropriate, and don't scare off your readers so quickly.

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Ultimately, Brant, people have given their opinions and come to a bit of a consensus: drop the neologisms fromt the opening 13, so it doesn't appear like you're trying to impress us.

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Um, sorry but...no. Thats the "consensus" you and Rob Roy came to...your two opinions...which is fine. But since two others offered there opinions on the first 13, and did not echo your two opinions. That isn't a consensus, its a tie. And according to Stephen King, ties go to the author.

Thats the trouble I'm having with some people around here...you state your opinions as facts....and some times make statements as facts that are simply inaccurate.

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You may not be worried about scaring people off, because you may not care about having a very large readership, but if that was the case, I imagine you wouldn't come here asking for critiques in the first place.

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I think you and some others here would be well serve by reviewing what Kathleen posted about the purpose of Hatrack. Its to improve our writing...for whatever reasons we may have. But to improve OUR writing, not for each of us to make our writing into whatever some see as the most easily publishable.

I specifically stated my reasons for participating in the Hatrack workshop in my messages above, as well as my feelings about being published and my personal tastes in regards to evoking emotions in readers, but since those parts of my posts have obviously been overlooked or ignored, I am going to copy and paste them below, exactly as they first appeared, for the benefit of all.

From my "Artist's Statement":

"Obviously, I have an interest in things like publication, notoriety, and honing my works to perfection with the assistance of other writers. I wouldn't bother with things like Hatrack if I didn't. However, I'm not willing to compromise my visions in order to attain these goals. Things like sympathetic characters, eliciting emotions in the reader, and other anthropomorphic and anthropocentric aspects of writing and storytelling are meaningless to me."

From my subsequent "Artist's Response":

"There are, however, a few popular aspects of writing that I do not care for and do not implement. There are even some which, for various reasons, I am completely incapable of incorporating. Some of these things include psychology, eliciting emotions, and creating sympathetic characters."

and

"I have seen how much my works can be improved with the help of others, and, like other Hatrackers, that's why I'm here and I am extremely grateful to everyone who participates on this website."

I think that sums it up pretty clearly. My "Artist's Statement" was not directed at any particular individual, nor was it intended solely for people who have posted on this thread. It was for the benefit of everyone on Hatrack, past, present, or future, who might not understand the reasons behind my particular style of writing. The intention of my "Artist's Statement" was to elucidate my authorial intentions, my preferences as both a reader and a writer, and my philosophies about literature and creativity in general.

There are a few specific remarks I would like to directly respond to, as well.

Yes, I do enjoy inventing new words, but I do not make up new words just for the sake of it, and I do not just stick a bunch of random letters together and give them an arbitrary definition. Sometimes I invent new words while I'm writing simply because the word for what I'm trying to express doesn't exist. If, through a coherent fusion of pre-existing prefixes and suffixes, or a slight modification in the spelling of a particular term, I feel that I can invent an intelligible and decipherable word, I do so. If not, I suck it up, express myself the best I can with words that already exist, and move on. And, yes, sometimes I invent new words while I'm reading, watching television, eating dinner, showering, etc. I have a specific file on my computer containing all the words I've created and, for the record, I've only used a fraction of them, to date, in my poems, stories, and novel.

I'm not sure "Bilbo Baggins" qualifies as neologism. Either way, I'm not a big fan of Tolkien, and neither is Michael Moorcock, so you're not going to win me over with that one

I would never infer that someone doesn't know the meaning of basic words like "parasite" and
"pestilence".

I do not write anything with a specific audience in mind. I am not trying to appeal to anyone in particular. I do not write mainstream fantasy or science fiction. I have invented a new genre entitled "Phantasmagoria".

Suggestions and opinions about not using made-up words in the first thirteen lines of a story or novel are perfectly fine. Suggestions to wrap Night Beetle in saran wrap and have an armadillo eat jell-o off of his head while drunken monkeys are having an orgy in a giant bowl of fruit salad and thumbtacks are fine. Any and all suggestions are fine, as long as they are made courteously and respectfully, are clearly stated as opinions rather than facts, and are completely devoid of sarcastic remarks and implied insults.

I think we can all learn a lot from the wisdom of Merlion, myself included. I would encourage everyone to read his remarks and at least consider them in the future.

In closing, I would like to once again state that I am not pretentious, I do not attempt to impress and dazzle people with my vocabulary, verbosity, and/or neologism, and I do not show off for others while I am writing. I'm having too much fun when I'm playing in my created universes to even bother.

Visit and add me on MySpace: www.myspace.com/infiniverse

Best regards to everyone,

Brant

P.S. As of March 8 I have added a short description classifying this piece as avant-garde, Lovecraftian horror to the initial post. I will be including similar quasi-classifications with my stories from now on, to clarify their nature and hopefully prevent future misunderstandings and chaos. Thank you to everyone who participated on this thread. I know this one got a little crazy, but I bear no ill will to anyone who took the time to leave their feedback here, and realize it was all made in the spirit of helpfulness.