"The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt": Writing Progress and Goals, Feb. 15-21
Finally, some real progress.
I wrote two crits on the Online Writing Workshop for SF, Fantasy, and Horror and I'm getting back into the groove. I do best when I read the story I'm critting twice, once all the way through without stopping and then while taking notes as I read. Then I write the whole crit in one sitting on the OWW web site. It takes me longer to do it this way then it would if I read the story and just reacted all over the place, but people are paying to use this amazing site and a lot of its worth is dependent on the time and effort people put into their crits. I try to write the kind of crits I prefer to get.
I did finally post "The Company President" to the site, and I already got one crit, which is super fast. I suspect it's because this is my shortest story ever, coming in around 1300 words (my usual stories are like, 7-9k, or end up even longer as novel beginnings). The crit is a curious mixture of encouragement and backhanded compliments. I'm not sure the author of the crit though of them as being backhanded compliments, but they feel like it (they're in the line of "You could work on this more, but why bother -- you could just submit it to low-paying markets and probably get it published and get what you can out of it"). However, I also got some great feedback about the tone of my narrative (I kept it distant on purpose, but there were a few places that didn't seem to work as well as others) that I definitely needed.
Actually, in rereading the crit, maybe what I'm taking as backhanded compliments are more like very practical advice. The story is kind of an experiment for me, and it's not like I'm going to turn it into some genius thing.
I finished editing chapter seven of The Sunflower Man (finally!) and I added around 700 words to get it working, so I actually did some writing instead of just moving things around (though I also did some of that, too). I also made some preliminary notes on chapter eight and moved some things around in chapters nine and ten. I think I'll have to add a whole other chapter's worth of writing to do after chapter eight (I'm trying to keep all chapters between 2000-4000 words) to make some of the major plot changes I've made fit. Bah. At least I was feeling it this week. I'd really love to be done with this thing, but with all the stuff I'm adding, I know I'll need another revision after this one.
I also did some notes on "Lucky Lotto" and "Blood and Ink" but nothing I would call a formal outline. Man, I really suck at outlines.
Writing goals for February 15-21:
I wrote two crits on the Online Writing Workshop for SF, Fantasy, and Horror and I'm getting back into the groove. I do best when I read the story I'm critting twice, once all the way through without stopping and then while taking notes as I read. Then I write the whole crit in one sitting on the OWW web site. It takes me longer to do it this way then it would if I read the story and just reacted all over the place, but people are paying to use this amazing site and a lot of its worth is dependent on the time and effort people put into their crits. I try to write the kind of crits I prefer to get.
I did finally post "The Company President" to the site, and I already got one crit, which is super fast. I suspect it's because this is my shortest story ever, coming in around 1300 words (my usual stories are like, 7-9k, or end up even longer as novel beginnings). The crit is a curious mixture of encouragement and backhanded compliments. I'm not sure the author of the crit though of them as being backhanded compliments, but they feel like it (they're in the line of "You could work on this more, but why bother -- you could just submit it to low-paying markets and probably get it published and get what you can out of it"). However, I also got some great feedback about the tone of my narrative (I kept it distant on purpose, but there were a few places that didn't seem to work as well as others) that I definitely needed.
Actually, in rereading the crit, maybe what I'm taking as backhanded compliments are more like very practical advice. The story is kind of an experiment for me, and it's not like I'm going to turn it into some genius thing.
I finished editing chapter seven of The Sunflower Man (finally!) and I added around 700 words to get it working, so I actually did some writing instead of just moving things around (though I also did some of that, too). I also made some preliminary notes on chapter eight and moved some things around in chapters nine and ten. I think I'll have to add a whole other chapter's worth of writing to do after chapter eight (I'm trying to keep all chapters between 2000-4000 words) to make some of the major plot changes I've made fit. Bah. At least I was feeling it this week. I'd really love to be done with this thing, but with all the stuff I'm adding, I know I'll need another revision after this one.
I also did some notes on "Lucky Lotto" and "Blood and Ink" but nothing I would call a formal outline. Man, I really suck at outlines.
Writing goals for February 15-21:
- Two reviews on OWW
- Chapter eight of TSM
- I'd like to submit something for Writer's Journal Ghost/Horror story contest this year (the deadline is end of March), and I have several stories I work on for this, so I'd like to pick one this week -- it has to be under 2000 words, which is tough for me, but I need practice writing short things anway