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shalannaAlison Kent makes the point that I have made many times, that you need pros and your superiors to read your work if you want effective suggestions. I find that when the volunteers I search out read my work (the unwashed unpublished like me, generous as they are to read it at all, who don't read it with the eye/ear of an agent), I get either meaningless comments ("It was good . . . I liked it . . . I didn't get this [pointing at a passage with a subtle point that I could tweak, but it's probably just that they don't get puns or whatever] . . . and the way you spelled Ariadne's name bugged me and pulled me out of the story. . . .") or things that are definitely misleading and would ruin the book ("Make it into a hot sexy romance--a good sex scene every chapter" or "I only like first person books--make it first-person" when the book has to have several characters' POVs so that readers can know more than just what the one character knows). So it's not helpful. But there isn't any way to get feedback from a "real editor" or "real agent." I even bid on and won several critiques from two editors and one agent, and have heard nothing back from them (after being promised repeatedly that they were "about to look at it this weekend" and "will get back to you ASAP.") Sigh.
From Lee Goldberg via Alison Kent, I learned that screenwriter Paul Guyot says:
"Find writers BETTER than yourself to read your stuff. Stop having friends and fellow amateurs read it and critique it. Stop being involved in writers' groups (actual or cyber) that are made up of people trying to figure out for themselves what the hell it’s all about. Trust me, they will give you BAD advice on your work."
Where does one find these people? My answer is that you have to have something to offer THEM, and so you will not find these pros who want to help you until you are published yourself or you become famous for some other reason (preferably not because you are a notorious embezzler or serial rapist.) So this is a great idea in theory, but it loses a bit when you try to put it into practice. I can schmooze, but I don't attract people the way Val Kilmer (say) does, and so they don't offer to go the extra mile for me. Feeling sorry for me isn't enough, it appears. (grin)
Essentially the same thing about not sticking with putative crit groups is said by agent Karen Solem in "Embraced By Love," 11/21/05 Publisher’s Weekly:
“[Critique groups have] tended to homogenize a lot of writers,” says agent Karen Solem of Spencerhill Associates. “A lot of times the group dynamic takes a lot of freshness and individual voice and creativity out of the projects.”
That's what *I* have always said. Patrick Nielsen Hayden told me that I had to get out of the crit group I was in, because they were giving me bad advice. (That was when I did VP II by phone.) I could see that the groups were taking the good parts and the witty bits out of everyone's work, and I felt that was ruining it.
But then the No-Style Style became so popular (if not dominant), and groups were working well for people. Then John Grisham said he was going to publish _A Painted House_ under his own name. Our next-door neighbor huffed, "I usedta love his books. But that one was just nothin' but a kid ridin' around in the back of the pickup and pickin' cotton. Who wants to read about that?" *GRIN* I'm sure the new novel is more in JG's voice and is much closer to his life's work and masterpiece than the thrillers, but his readership was expecting the same-old. See this thread on Making Light about branding and expectations and pseudonyms. I haven't been savaged there for my views . . . yet. (GRIN) Hey, could I be right for a change?
Back to the "how do I find professionals to read my work" thread for a moment. I tried that auction route and found it lacking. Yes, I realize that those auctions were meant for people who'd send their most polished, prime-time-ready work (which I did). Maybe some people expected a "send me more" or "sorry" letter. I didn't even get THAT much. Perhaps I'm just a demanding beyotch. But if it says you win a two-page critique by e-mail, that's what I kind of expect to see happen. Seriously. If you don't have time to do it, then don't volunteer. It isn't fair that my money went ahead to the person who got the charity, but I did not get what was promised in the auction--is it?
And for that matter, I wonder whether I can or should put those charity donations down for the IRS. We'll probably just take the standard $200 or whatever it is, because who wants to be audited? I have proof of the MDA contributions and the Hurricane Katrina telethon contribution, so that'll make $200. Would be nice to use the other donations, though, especially if I'm not going to get some kind of commentary from the professionals.
Yes, I really wanted to hear their honest opinions. When you send a requested partial, you can't expect to get a revision letter or any kind of complex comment. You just get a "sorry" back. But a *critique* . . . that implies that they'd take a few moments to scribble their unedited reactions. "This is too much like what is out there," or "This interested me until Event X," or *whatever*. "You have an infodump here that needs to go; just briefly mention that she has that slingshot, and maybe that it was given to her by Bat Masterson, and then go on," or "I'd like to see more of a reason for Jane to do a backflip when she knows she isn't wearing undies and the chief disapproves of her going commando" would be even better and wouldn't take THAT much effort to write out, when you have offered a critique. Anything like that could help me with revisions. Without some feedback, I have no idea whether revisions would help or just be more wheel-spinning because the larger concept is flawed or the characters make you hate them (or whatever).
But anyhow, I've been saying for a while that I needed some actual pro advice. I *did* get that from Melissa Senate when I won her auctioned critique. I only wish she were still an acquiring editor! (grin)
Through a mailing list I'm on, I also got an offer from a published mystery writer to look at my mystery and write out a short reaction with details if I'd send her a hardcopy and a SASE. Thrilled, I mailed it off with a fiver and a free book (a Donna Andrews) as a thank-you. But all she did was glance at the pages up to page ten and then e-mail me that she had lost interest, and therefore she was recycling my pages with no commentary. That cost $19 to send. I e-mailed her back begging her to pass the pages along to ANYBODY who might read them (at that point, her mom or her friend would have been OK), but she curtly sent back that she'd done her civic duty and my 500 pages were in the dumper. She thought that was fine. I disagreed . . . had she said "I'm going to glance at a few pages until I find a flaw and then just cut you dead," I would have just mailed a few pages or would have found someone else. She didn't have an obligation to write a ten-page crit, of course, but I do think that she should have told me that she didn't want to "pay it forward" with me. In the same situation, had I thought a book was hopeless or whatever, I would have written out some suggestions. I have in the past written out helpful suggestions and possible rephrasings and even suggested writing exercises for people who were beginners and who asked for my help for free. If I didn't have time, I turned them down. I didn't ask 'em to use up a printer cartridge printing all 500 pages and mail it across the country . . . I usually took e-mailed submissions, and twice took manuscripts that someone else had marked up with a red pen (I used a purple pen for my remarks on top of that.) It would've been better if that author had said, "Sorry, find someone else to pay it forward, because I have no patience and I'm not going to bother to write, 'You lost me on page ten because I don't believe that Mary has any motivation to scrape up and eat that dog turd except that the plot says so.' I'm going to try to get rid of you as soon as I can, rather than telling you WHY your work turned me off, even though you said you wanted to know EVEN IF IT WAS just because you used semicolons or named your characters Russian names." There's no possibility that I will ever recommend her books to anyone, nor will I hear her name mentioned without going into this little diatribe, because I never forget a disappointment. *evil grin* Well, maybe a hundred years from now.
But she should've just told me, "No." She shouldn't have had me spend all that money to send the hardcopy, at the very least. She shouldn't have said that she'd tell me what she didn't like and where I lost her, because she did not in fact DO that. She was vague about why it didn't grab her. And she wasn't an editor/agent trying to hurry and clear the desk--she was a person who said she would be willing to Pay It Forward and take a look with an eye towards telling me what might be wrong with the work. Very disillusioning.
But then I've never had a mentor. Neither have you, most likely. We muddle along somehow.
What drives me to despair, though, is that all through school, I "had such great potential." All of my teachers sent me to the enrichment seminars and into special classes or groups that met in the library. Anytime I turned in an essay or story, they praised it lavishly. Not that they never offered suggestions--it's just that they believed I had a special gift for prose. They knew that I was fascinated by the rules of grammar, punctuation, and spelling, and had therefore learned the basics of the craft; they saw that I was learning how to create characters, build and imply setting, make up witty dialogue, and so forth. Maybe it was just that I was the best one in those particular classes and schools; this is likely because it was the pot-smoking jackass era (think "Freaks and Geeks" without the computers and the computer geek subculture--what we had were slide rules and eventually programmable calculators that could be taught to read SHELL OIL upside-down), and everyone else was a stoner and/or a rodeo rider or a cheerleader who went out to the lake every weekend to make out with whoever wanted to make out. No one else took seriously the idea that they had a life's work or calling, and they hadn't started thinking about ways to earn a living other than by selling drugs or working at Wal-Mart and finally making shift manager. (I exaggerate, but not by much. And this was in the fancy suburb of Plano, Texas, where the suicide rate soon skyrocketed among adolescents because the parents shoveled money at them but didn't give them any attention or time.) So naturally a nerd like me stood out. I went to Ready Writing competitions, won spelling bees, and attended "Math Days" at universities. Man, I could really be somebody.
But then I got to college and was forced/persuaded to major in computer science, in which I really had very little interest. I was told it was the Next Big Thing, which it was, I suppose. But it wasn't my passion, and I didn't get picked by anyone in the faculty to be groomed for greatness in that field (for good reason). I wasn't good enough in the math courses (that was my other major) to be seen as a genius by the faculty there; I was just good enough to make the grades. I wasn't taken seriously by the faculty in the creative writing courses I took because I wasn't an English major and I was "one of those math types" who wouldn't stick with it . . . I was still writing the college angst novels, and they didn't see potential. That really bugged me, but I still "knew" that I was put here to write novels, so I concentrated on learning whatever I could in the seminars.
When I got out with degrees in math and CS, I got a job, but the job was drudgery. Everyone else who started out as a software engineer was a wizard, while I sat and daydreamed about something else or scribbled down story ideas on Post-Its (this was before MS-Word . . . I couldn't have a little window to work on stories behind my window into the lines of code.) Everyone thought there was something wrong with me because I wasn't on cloud 9 over being able to work on the computer all day. I confided in a few people that I was writing a novel, and they were like, "A *what*? Why? For what?" They assumed it was hard SF because that was the only thing they read other than user manuals or documentation, and when they found out it wasn't, they couldn't believe I would waste time that way. "If you insist on doing that, do a screenplay, because people like movies," they advised. They really couldn't relate to someone who saw anything in literature or in general fiction. I'm afraid they were fairly typical for grinds of the early 1980s, though I could be wrong ("but I'm not," as that detective would say.)
And I wasn't a very good coder. I mean, I could do it, but it took me longer than the others. Maybe I wasn't trying hard enough or I was feeling sorry for myself because I didn't choose another path, but anyhow, I slogged through what I was doing. My husband and his friends speak of how, when they think about a function or a piece of code they're planning to write to accomplish a certain task, they "see" lines of code scrolling by in their mind's eyes. That's how a scene works for me. If I'm getting a new story idea, the pictures will form and the words will just come to me. I go into a flow state. They went into flow states for coding. It's a similar feeling . . . just different outlets for the creativity. But I have to cobble code together and I always find some little bug. Aarghh.
I soon transferred into software testing, which was better because I got to read the design documents and use the information to write test plans and procedures. This was writing! It took away a lot of my creative drive for writing/typing when I got home, though. Engineers and bosses were always gaga because "she can just THINK UP SENTENCES." To them, the code and its intentions were so clear that they couldn't imagine writing an "explanation." Soon my boss would drop things on my desk (such as data flow diagrams or whatnot in pictorial/notes form) and say, "Word that up." Hee! It was a parallel to "code that up," I suppose.
Anyway, I spent years doing that. And then I did software quality metrics for a while. But I kept writing novels and sending them out. They weren't utter fishwrap, even back then. I got really encouraging rejections (which doesn't happen now, when my skills are better. Gnash). I had many "nibbles." I placed in contests, including the first Warner contest (first runner-up). But the magic eluded me still.
Then I had a life-threatening illness, and after that, my husband said I didn't have to work any more, that he'd support the family if I'd just keep house (poor man, he knew not what he was signing up to) and write. That's what I've been doing for some time now--although family issues have taken up more of my time than I intended, and I still am not completely without any limitations from having been ill, I've been able to sit down and write.
I suppose I'm just samhill stubborn enough to keep doing it, too. The heck. I thought I'd actually DO something, BE somebody. My teachers would be really disappointed. I'm disappointed. It looks as if I'm going to be one of those people you thought would really accomplish something, but didn't live up to potential. In my defense, I believe that my illnesses and other circumstances in my life have kept me from doing things that I really should have been able to do. Yet a writer needs nothing more than a pen and paper . . . and I've had that.
Where am I going wrong?
I don't know. The road is dark ahead, and I only have this crappy flashlight that illuminates the few feet in front of me. But I press on, through the rain and the darkness, hoping against hope that the road (it goes ever on and on) will lead me into whatever my destiny may be. And no matter what, I still clutch to my chest that all-important TOWEL.
# # #
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
--e e cummings
From Lee Goldberg via Alison Kent, I learned that screenwriter Paul Guyot says:
"Find writers BETTER than yourself to read your stuff. Stop having friends and fellow amateurs read it and critique it. Stop being involved in writers' groups (actual or cyber) that are made up of people trying to figure out for themselves what the hell it’s all about. Trust me, they will give you BAD advice on your work."
Where does one find these people? My answer is that you have to have something to offer THEM, and so you will not find these pros who want to help you until you are published yourself or you become famous for some other reason (preferably not because you are a notorious embezzler or serial rapist.) So this is a great idea in theory, but it loses a bit when you try to put it into practice. I can schmooze, but I don't attract people the way Val Kilmer (say) does, and so they don't offer to go the extra mile for me. Feeling sorry for me isn't enough, it appears. (grin)
Essentially the same thing about not sticking with putative crit groups is said by agent Karen Solem in "Embraced By Love," 11/21/05 Publisher’s Weekly:
“[Critique groups have] tended to homogenize a lot of writers,” says agent Karen Solem of Spencerhill Associates. “A lot of times the group dynamic takes a lot of freshness and individual voice and creativity out of the projects.”
That's what *I* have always said. Patrick Nielsen Hayden told me that I had to get out of the crit group I was in, because they were giving me bad advice. (That was when I did VP II by phone.) I could see that the groups were taking the good parts and the witty bits out of everyone's work, and I felt that was ruining it.
But then the No-Style Style became so popular (if not dominant), and groups were working well for people. Then John Grisham said he was going to publish _A Painted House_ under his own name. Our next-door neighbor huffed, "I usedta love his books. But that one was just nothin' but a kid ridin' around in the back of the pickup and pickin' cotton. Who wants to read about that?" *GRIN* I'm sure the new novel is more in JG's voice and is much closer to his life's work and masterpiece than the thrillers, but his readership was expecting the same-old. See this thread on Making Light about branding and expectations and pseudonyms. I haven't been savaged there for my views . . . yet. (GRIN) Hey, could I be right for a change?
Back to the "how do I find professionals to read my work" thread for a moment. I tried that auction route and found it lacking. Yes, I realize that those auctions were meant for people who'd send their most polished, prime-time-ready work (which I did). Maybe some people expected a "send me more" or "sorry" letter. I didn't even get THAT much. Perhaps I'm just a demanding beyotch. But if it says you win a two-page critique by e-mail, that's what I kind of expect to see happen. Seriously. If you don't have time to do it, then don't volunteer. It isn't fair that my money went ahead to the person who got the charity, but I did not get what was promised in the auction--is it?
And for that matter, I wonder whether I can or should put those charity donations down for the IRS. We'll probably just take the standard $200 or whatever it is, because who wants to be audited? I have proof of the MDA contributions and the Hurricane Katrina telethon contribution, so that'll make $200. Would be nice to use the other donations, though, especially if I'm not going to get some kind of commentary from the professionals.
Yes, I really wanted to hear their honest opinions. When you send a requested partial, you can't expect to get a revision letter or any kind of complex comment. You just get a "sorry" back. But a *critique* . . . that implies that they'd take a few moments to scribble their unedited reactions. "This is too much like what is out there," or "This interested me until Event X," or *whatever*. "You have an infodump here that needs to go; just briefly mention that she has that slingshot, and maybe that it was given to her by Bat Masterson, and then go on," or "I'd like to see more of a reason for Jane to do a backflip when she knows she isn't wearing undies and the chief disapproves of her going commando" would be even better and wouldn't take THAT much effort to write out, when you have offered a critique. Anything like that could help me with revisions. Without some feedback, I have no idea whether revisions would help or just be more wheel-spinning because the larger concept is flawed or the characters make you hate them (or whatever).
But anyhow, I've been saying for a while that I needed some actual pro advice. I *did* get that from Melissa Senate when I won her auctioned critique. I only wish she were still an acquiring editor! (grin)
Through a mailing list I'm on, I also got an offer from a published mystery writer to look at my mystery and write out a short reaction with details if I'd send her a hardcopy and a SASE. Thrilled, I mailed it off with a fiver and a free book (a Donna Andrews) as a thank-you. But all she did was glance at the pages up to page ten and then e-mail me that she had lost interest, and therefore she was recycling my pages with no commentary. That cost $19 to send. I e-mailed her back begging her to pass the pages along to ANYBODY who might read them (at that point, her mom or her friend would have been OK), but she curtly sent back that she'd done her civic duty and my 500 pages were in the dumper. She thought that was fine. I disagreed . . . had she said "I'm going to glance at a few pages until I find a flaw and then just cut you dead," I would have just mailed a few pages or would have found someone else. She didn't have an obligation to write a ten-page crit, of course, but I do think that she should have told me that she didn't want to "pay it forward" with me. In the same situation, had I thought a book was hopeless or whatever, I would have written out some suggestions. I have in the past written out helpful suggestions and possible rephrasings and even suggested writing exercises for people who were beginners and who asked for my help for free. If I didn't have time, I turned them down. I didn't ask 'em to use up a printer cartridge printing all 500 pages and mail it across the country . . . I usually took e-mailed submissions, and twice took manuscripts that someone else had marked up with a red pen (I used a purple pen for my remarks on top of that.) It would've been better if that author had said, "Sorry, find someone else to pay it forward, because I have no patience and I'm not going to bother to write, 'You lost me on page ten because I don't believe that Mary has any motivation to scrape up and eat that dog turd except that the plot says so.' I'm going to try to get rid of you as soon as I can, rather than telling you WHY your work turned me off, even though you said you wanted to know EVEN IF IT WAS just because you used semicolons or named your characters Russian names." There's no possibility that I will ever recommend her books to anyone, nor will I hear her name mentioned without going into this little diatribe, because I never forget a disappointment. *evil grin* Well, maybe a hundred years from now.
But she should've just told me, "No." She shouldn't have had me spend all that money to send the hardcopy, at the very least. She shouldn't have said that she'd tell me what she didn't like and where I lost her, because she did not in fact DO that. She was vague about why it didn't grab her. And she wasn't an editor/agent trying to hurry and clear the desk--she was a person who said she would be willing to Pay It Forward and take a look with an eye towards telling me what might be wrong with the work. Very disillusioning.
But then I've never had a mentor. Neither have you, most likely. We muddle along somehow.
What drives me to despair, though, is that all through school, I "had such great potential." All of my teachers sent me to the enrichment seminars and into special classes or groups that met in the library. Anytime I turned in an essay or story, they praised it lavishly. Not that they never offered suggestions--it's just that they believed I had a special gift for prose. They knew that I was fascinated by the rules of grammar, punctuation, and spelling, and had therefore learned the basics of the craft; they saw that I was learning how to create characters, build and imply setting, make up witty dialogue, and so forth. Maybe it was just that I was the best one in those particular classes and schools; this is likely because it was the pot-smoking jackass era (think "Freaks and Geeks" without the computers and the computer geek subculture--what we had were slide rules and eventually programmable calculators that could be taught to read SHELL OIL upside-down), and everyone else was a stoner and/or a rodeo rider or a cheerleader who went out to the lake every weekend to make out with whoever wanted to make out. No one else took seriously the idea that they had a life's work or calling, and they hadn't started thinking about ways to earn a living other than by selling drugs or working at Wal-Mart and finally making shift manager. (I exaggerate, but not by much. And this was in the fancy suburb of Plano, Texas, where the suicide rate soon skyrocketed among adolescents because the parents shoveled money at them but didn't give them any attention or time.) So naturally a nerd like me stood out. I went to Ready Writing competitions, won spelling bees, and attended "Math Days" at universities. Man, I could really be somebody.
But then I got to college and was forced/persuaded to major in computer science, in which I really had very little interest. I was told it was the Next Big Thing, which it was, I suppose. But it wasn't my passion, and I didn't get picked by anyone in the faculty to be groomed for greatness in that field (for good reason). I wasn't good enough in the math courses (that was my other major) to be seen as a genius by the faculty there; I was just good enough to make the grades. I wasn't taken seriously by the faculty in the creative writing courses I took because I wasn't an English major and I was "one of those math types" who wouldn't stick with it . . . I was still writing the college angst novels, and they didn't see potential. That really bugged me, but I still "knew" that I was put here to write novels, so I concentrated on learning whatever I could in the seminars.
When I got out with degrees in math and CS, I got a job, but the job was drudgery. Everyone else who started out as a software engineer was a wizard, while I sat and daydreamed about something else or scribbled down story ideas on Post-Its (this was before MS-Word . . . I couldn't have a little window to work on stories behind my window into the lines of code.) Everyone thought there was something wrong with me because I wasn't on cloud 9 over being able to work on the computer all day. I confided in a few people that I was writing a novel, and they were like, "A *what*? Why? For what?" They assumed it was hard SF because that was the only thing they read other than user manuals or documentation, and when they found out it wasn't, they couldn't believe I would waste time that way. "If you insist on doing that, do a screenplay, because people like movies," they advised. They really couldn't relate to someone who saw anything in literature or in general fiction. I'm afraid they were fairly typical for grinds of the early 1980s, though I could be wrong ("but I'm not," as that detective would say.)
And I wasn't a very good coder. I mean, I could do it, but it took me longer than the others. Maybe I wasn't trying hard enough or I was feeling sorry for myself because I didn't choose another path, but anyhow, I slogged through what I was doing. My husband and his friends speak of how, when they think about a function or a piece of code they're planning to write to accomplish a certain task, they "see" lines of code scrolling by in their mind's eyes. That's how a scene works for me. If I'm getting a new story idea, the pictures will form and the words will just come to me. I go into a flow state. They went into flow states for coding. It's a similar feeling . . . just different outlets for the creativity. But I have to cobble code together and I always find some little bug. Aarghh.
I soon transferred into software testing, which was better because I got to read the design documents and use the information to write test plans and procedures. This was writing! It took away a lot of my creative drive for writing/typing when I got home, though. Engineers and bosses were always gaga because "she can just THINK UP SENTENCES." To them, the code and its intentions were so clear that they couldn't imagine writing an "explanation." Soon my boss would drop things on my desk (such as data flow diagrams or whatnot in pictorial/notes form) and say, "Word that up." Hee! It was a parallel to "code that up," I suppose.
Anyway, I spent years doing that. And then I did software quality metrics for a while. But I kept writing novels and sending them out. They weren't utter fishwrap, even back then. I got really encouraging rejections (which doesn't happen now, when my skills are better. Gnash). I had many "nibbles." I placed in contests, including the first Warner contest (first runner-up). But the magic eluded me still.
Then I had a life-threatening illness, and after that, my husband said I didn't have to work any more, that he'd support the family if I'd just keep house (poor man, he knew not what he was signing up to) and write. That's what I've been doing for some time now--although family issues have taken up more of my time than I intended, and I still am not completely without any limitations from having been ill, I've been able to sit down and write.
I suppose I'm just samhill stubborn enough to keep doing it, too. The heck. I thought I'd actually DO something, BE somebody. My teachers would be really disappointed. I'm disappointed. It looks as if I'm going to be one of those people you thought would really accomplish something, but didn't live up to potential. In my defense, I believe that my illnesses and other circumstances in my life have kept me from doing things that I really should have been able to do. Yet a writer needs nothing more than a pen and paper . . . and I've had that.
Where am I going wrong?
I don't know. The road is dark ahead, and I only have this crappy flashlight that illuminates the few feet in front of me. But I press on, through the rain and the darkness, hoping against hope that the road (it goes ever on and on) will lead me into whatever my destiny may be. And no matter what, I still clutch to my chest that all-important TOWEL.
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
--e e cummings
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no subject
Date: 2006-01-04 03:44 am (UTC)It's not only not fair--it kinda sounds like fraud. Well-intentioned fraud, probably, but taking money for services you don't end up rendering is a little like taking home a new car and then just forgetting to pay for it.
How long has it been since this auction? And did the person involved give you any idea how long the whole thing would take? I ask because I had a partial requested by Poisoned Pen back in May (I remember it was May because I got the request right after I'd gone to a Blue Rodeo concert and bought a horse--that was a big week!) and I didn't hear anything further from them until just before Christmas. I'd been warned they were swamped and it would take a while, but I was glad I had the warning.
I won't comment on the promising-youngster-in-the-smart-classes part, because twenty years ago when I graduated from high school I was one of them myself--in fact my grade three teacher is still confidently waiting for me to become a successful author, God love her. I don't think much about those days anymore because in my case it was a pretty long time ago and hell, lots of the people I went to school with have either flamed out, surpassed everyone's expectations for them (including their own) or done like me and just sort of found a happy niche where what they're good at is what they do. Thank God for library school!
However, I'm still plugging away at the writing because it's fun. I'd love to be published in glorious hardcover, but after NaNo it's occurred to me that tossing chapters up on my LJ works all right for me, too. The thing is, if you write it you really want someone to read it, don't you?
Hang in there. It's a brand new year.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-04 06:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-04 07:49 am (UTC)Did you get any good from putting a few pages up here some weeks back? Because you can always post a chap, or part of a chap, and though this venue is a hassle to use for critiquing, it's also easy and thus people on the fly are likelier to take a crack as time permits.
Third: go to VP in person! You will really get sooooo much more if you attended in person. (Some people even go back again a couple of times.) You can get closer looks, more in depth discussion.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-04 09:38 am (UTC)P.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-04 12:04 pm (UTC)I agree. Critique groups are good, often vital, for brand new writers who haven't a clue about basic craft -- grammar, POV, show-vs-tell, foreshadowing, etc. And they can provide a more advanced writer with general does it/does it not work responses. But IMO, professional feedback often is the only way to identify subtle but serious flaws in a more advanced writer's work. In a way, form rejections from editors/agents can be considered effective suggestions, but personalised comments are generally more helpful.
Find writers BETTER than yourself to read your stuff....Where does one find these people?
I've noticed that you have previously put up chapters for review here on your lj, and you've received critiques from multiple professional writers -- Sherwood Smith, Beth Bernobich, etc. It would seem that this venue is a more efficient source of feedback than the reviews you bid on and won but never received. (And I agree it's shocking that these editors have refused to perform a job they accepted money for.)
But then I've never had a mentor. Neither have you, most likely.
In addition to my extremely valuable VP experience, I've been fortunate enough to have two pro writers as long term mentors -- a superb short story writer, and a novelist who publishes with one of the big fantasy houses. Not because I could offer them much in return. Just because, I suppose, they're very nice people, and for whatever reason they like me. That seems to be what makes the world go round.