Mark Andrew Edwards

I was reading a blog post* today that continued the pile-on of critique groups. The writer suggests that instead of a group of writers working in the same genre with similar skill levels, you should get:

A publicist

A poet

A screenwriter

An editor

And these people will become your team to kick you up into the major leagues of writing.  A ‘team of specialists’, rather than a team of peers.  He seems to suggest you should seek out specific types of people, befriend them and, well, use them. Sounds sleazy to me.

Look, I have nothing against the idea of paying someone for their help.  If you have the cash to splash on poets, screenwriters and editors, go for it. I’m sure your work will be better for it.  But here’s one of my big problems with this suggestion:

What’s in it for them?

A team of specialists sounds great but unless you’re living in certain parts of LA or Manhattan, you’re not likely to bump into these people at random.  So, you’d be seeking out people, not for mutual assistance but for how they can benefit you. How very…Hollywood.

My idea of a critique group is a bunch of people who can help each other.  Finding a group of people who are close to your level of skill, who understand the genres you write, who get along and are willing to help and commit to helping each other is difficult enough.  Sure, it would be great if your fellow writers were ALL OF THAT + publicists, screenwriters, poets, editors, journalists, etc.  But if you find a group like that, you might as well go buy lottery tickets and really cash in.

A critique group is not just a clubhouse but it’s not just mercenaries guild, either.  What you need, I think, are people who can:

Read your work and think about prior to your group meetings

Look critically at your work

Understand the genre you’re trying to sell in

Tell you if it entertains

Always tell you the truth about what does and doesn’t work

That’s hard enough. That’s good enough. That’s frelling GREAT, if you ask me.  Or any of the other Wordslingers.

*the ‘Red Pen of Doom’, http://redpenofdoom.com/2012/05/16/build-your-own-writing-monster/

Ugh.  Over a week. I don’t think I’ve gone this long without updating. My apologies.  I may need to start writing these blog posts before I leave home.  Right now Logan Tiberius is taking up a lot of my free time.  Puppies. What can you do?

I got another rejection letter for Island of Lost Gods but they editors hung on to it for a while. Another ‘almost’, that’s good. I might try Black Gate for that story and then start looking at the semi-pro market. Or maybe self-publish it.

I was reading Wool, Amazon hand the whole Omnibus on sale.  It’s good, several novellas in the same setting, often with the same characters.  I might do something similar with my Shallow Sea short stories. If I self-publish the Angel Odyssey novels, I’ll probably include a short story with each e-book.  But it’s a little early to give up on the stories.  There are still a few markets out there to ping.

My latest short story in that world, has wandered from novelette territory into Novella length.  Needless to say, that limits my markets to F&SF and maybe Tor.com.  At least the pro markets will be scarce.  I MIGHT be able to cut it down to a ‘mere’ novelette, if I can get it back down under 10k words.  Knowing me, editing it will make the thing swell up to a short novel. Heh.  I like the story, though, the characters and the world. Maybe it does belong in a novel but it does tell a concrete story.

Anyway, I’m falling behind on submissions. Tonight, I’m going to send a few more out to see what they can pick up: form rejections, kind words, maybe money and a pro sale.  Dare to dream, that’s why I do this, after all. I’m a born dreamer.

Is it a good thing or bad thing when you have to break your short story in two parts?  I’m still not sure. I still believe in the short story I wrote/am writing but it also sorta ballooned into this 10k word…thing (Novelette? Novella?). 

Honestly, I think a story is as long as it needs to be.  This one wanted to be longer.  I think its richer for the detail and length, I think the setup makes the character’s dilemma more engrossing for the reader.  I could cut the entire Ghetto sub-plot*, but I think the story and the world are better for the time spent there.

On the other hand, this could be a good lesson for me in story discipline.  Short stories do need to be short and to the point. They are supposed to be about ONE thing.  Everything that doesn’t belong to the main plot line is supposed to be trimmed away. 

I don’t know, maybe I have too many ‘darlings’ in this one.  I certainly suck at cutting down my own work.

We will see what the Wordslingers think about the first half of the story. It may be that this one needs to be trimmed and it may be that it needs to be gutted.  I hope not but I guess that’s the difference between writing for yourself and writing for a market.

*Yes, I know short stories shouldn’t have sub-plot. I guess that should have been a sign to me that the story wasn’t going to be short.

Got in an hour or so of sweet, sweet writing last night.  I went in pretty exhausted but as I lay there in the Throne of Writing (tm), a strange thing happened.  I started getting the urge to write. I guess I’ve finally programmed my subconscious enough that Throne of Writing (tm) = time to write.  Or something.

I should update my pagecount tab but I’ve been slacking there as well.  Still, I got a couple thousand words done and I think I’m at the 2/3rd point (? Maybe?).

I still don’t know if what I’m writing is simplistic crap or if it’s the best stuff I’ve written. I honestly don’t. I’m going to be leaning on the Wordslingers a lot for this story.  I like it but I’m partial.  It might be too slow, since it really is as much about the worldbuilding as it is about problem Ahmed my protagonist has.

It’s funny how you can become fond of a character.  Like Jacob in Angel Odyssey, I just like Ahmed. He’s trying so hard to be a man (even though he’s eight) and to do the right thing.  Even though he’s scared, even though he’s hurt. I hope that’s all coming through. I guess I’ll see next week.

Hopefully I’ll finish the story off tonight and then I can get busy sending a bunch of stories out. I’ve been slacking there, too. I think I only have three stories awaiting rejection right now.  Then I have Smooth Vengeance to work on and the edit and submission for feedback for Mageborn Mechanic…

Ah well. Good stuff.

I’m disappointed in myself. 

I hate these disclosure blog posts but hopefully folks can learn from my example.

Here’s the situation.  I signed up for the Fairwood Writers Workshop at Westercon this year.  However, I didn’t sign up (or know about it) until Norwescon, earlier this month.  The deadline for submissions was, oh, last night.  Now, I have a new puppy, I’ve been seriously sick and work has been vigorous this month. Heck of an April.  That hasn’t left a lot of time for writing.  Except for this weekend.

I have a short story, set in the same world as Angel Odyssey, about a boy living in a death-worshipping culture.  Honestly, I think it might have one of my stronger short stories. It was about a quarter done before this weekend, aiming for a word count of 7~8k.  It was a story I really wanted a pro’s opinion on.*

This weekend was the first time all month where I felt well enough and Logan Tiberious was ‘behaving’ well enough for me to try to get some writing done.  It wasn’t a huge window of time, a few hours on Saturday, a few hours on Sunday.  But it was enough.  If I had used my time wisely.

That’s the setup, here’s what happened.  I worked 13 hours Friday and Saturday…well…I felt like sitting on the couch or taking Logan for a walk**.  So, video games and resting won out over writing.  Not the end of the world, I thought. I have Sunday morning. I knew the basic plot. And I can seriously crank out wordcount when I’m in the zone.

What did I do Sunday morning?  I wrote a DIFFERENT story.***  I spent several precious hours writing a fifteen page short story.  It was one of those stories that popped into my head and I felt like I needed to blow out my tubes with, so to speak, so I could write what I really needed to write.

Bad idea.  I finished the throwaway story.  That left me with two hours to write about 6k words.  Not. Going. To. Happen. 

See, when I get into the zone and write like I did Sunday morning, it seriously takes a lot out of me. I end up sweaty and achy****  I have to rest, refuel and recover.  I did and I even got some more writing in (getting to the half-way point in the story) but I basically wasted my best shot.  And I wasn’t trying to write around writer’s block. I wasn’t at a loss for ideas in the story. I just had this story in my head that wanted to jump to the front of the line.

So this is coming from the heart, here.  If you want to be a professional writer, like I do.  You need to act like a professional. That doesn’t mean wearing a sportcoat to conventions.***** It means writing what you need to write and not what you want to.

Video games, TV, throwaway writing…those are all rewards for doing the work you need to do. You can’t let them be a barrier to doing the work itself.******

I ended up submitting an older story. Not a bad story by any means but one that I’ve gotten Wordslinger feedback on already and that I was already planning on revising******* before sending out. Now, I’ll be interested in hearing what folks have to say about it, more eyes are good.  But I didn’t send out the story I really wanted to.  And I’m not likely to be able to submit it to any other workshops this year.

Learn from my screw up.  Write what you need to write. Don’t goof around with a deadline.

*though I’m finding the feedback from the Wordslingers to be as useful, if not more so.

**It was also one of those rare sunny, warm Spring days.

***not a salable one, I suspect, either.

****from not getting up and moving around.  I’d say ‘don’t do that’ but to be honest, when I’m in the zone, nothing else exists. I can no more get up and walk around than I can stop doing the Humpty Dance halfway through.  Annnnd, that’s not a great metaphor.

*****Though that helps :)

******Notice I’m not including reading on that list.  Book reading can’t get in the way of your writing but it’s so vital for a writer that if you’re going to goof off, reading sort of gets a pass, I think.

*******And expanding to novella length, I think. Or maybe a novelette.  It feels like it wants to break the 10k barrier but I’m not sure by how much, yet.

Hey folks, sorry for the silence.  Work has been/is busy as heck.  I have an embarrassment of riches with no less than six Wordslinger short stories or chapters to critique before Saturday.  Sadly, my writing and blogging output has suffered.  

I'll try to get more writing done this weekend and have more thoughts for you all next week.

I’ve been slowly working on a short story set in my Angel Oddysey world.  I’m a big fan of writing short stories in the same world as my novels.*  It’s fun from a world-building perspective, which will help future novels as more of the world is clear in my head.  And it’s also a way to explore other characters, perspectives and cultures apart from the main story line.

This story is set in the Death God, Bohan’s, kingdom.  I was interested in the idea of a culture who’s whole focus is on death.  Not on the act of killing or sacrifice, but in the idea that all of life is testing ground to determine each person’s status in the afterlife.  Criminals and heretics (anyone from the culture that does not worship Bohan in the approved way) will have their sprits entombed in the flesh of the dead.  Which is a pretty nasty punishment.  Greedy or selfish people may have their corpse boiled down to the bones and then serve eternally as a skeletal servant.  And there are the higher orders of undead, who do not rot but are immune to pain and discomfort. Those undead are viewed as blessed by Bohan.

It’s a theocratic empire, ruled directly by a god and his priesthood and it serves as the ‘big bad’ in Angel Odyssey and several other books I have planned.  But the people in the culture are just people.  They have conflicts and problems, they love and fear just like any sailor on the Shallow Sea or farmer in the Dragon Rider lands.  They have their thugs and ruffians just like any other culture but they aren’t evil, despite worshipping a death god.

I’m about a third of the way through, I think.  I’m concerned that I’m not getting sufficient conflict front-loaded (this IS a short story, after all) and as always, the gap between the story in my head and what ends up on the page can be maddening.  But, I have high hopes for this story.  Maybe not as a salable piece (I’m just not finding a lot of pro markets for Fantasy short stories) but I hope it’s entertaining, full of wonder and strangeness with a sympathetic hero or two.

Anyway, six pages in, twelve to go.  I only hope I can make more time to write. Puppies are demanding.

*My next short story is set in my Mageborn Mechanic world.

 This comes out of some Wordslinger discussions about the Fairwood Writers workshop.  Some of us got pretty mixed feedback and took it hard.  I know what that’s like and last year’s feedback was, in part, discouraging.   Other Wordslingers got feedback that said that the reviewer doesn’t care for that genre (or subgenre) and wanted to story to be about something different.

Now hearing that someone doesn’t like or get your genre, that’s the sort of feedback we can/should pretty much dismiss out of hand. Everyone likes different things and that’s fine but if I hate mysteries*then my critique of a mystery story should be taken with a whole handful of salt. But someone telling you to re-write your story to please them?   Frankly, unless they’re dumping a truckload of money onto your front porch, you should tell them to take a hike. Mentally.

I say ‘mentally’ because dealing with negative feedback has two components. The internal and external.  Let’s talk about the external first.

Externally, thank the reviewer for their time and for reading it.**  Be polite. Be professional.*** Impressions matter, that monkey might be someone who is going to sitting on a review board or voting for you on an award or editing an anthology you’re dying to get into.  They may not remember your story but they will remember you.  Finally, no matter if the feedback is positive or negative, ignore it and write another story/chapter.  That links into the internal response to feedback.

You can’t take let it stop or even slow down your writing. Momentum counts, in writing as well as the physical universe.  If they praise you to the heavens, write another story.  If they tell you that your story sucks, write another story.  Otherwise, if someone’s feedback is REALLY going to make you stop writing, then you don’t want to be a writer badly enough. 

That doesn’t mean that negative feedback or reviews don’t hurt. They do and I’m not trivializing the psychic damage and cruel or thoughtless review can cause. But you have to absorb it. You can’t take it personally, even if the reviewer is making personal attacks.  You have to keep going.

Dealing with the negative feedback is hard enough, at least you know that hurts. How do you deal with feedback in general or praise that nonetheless steers your story in a different direction.  For example, one piece of positive feedback I got for Mageborn Mechanic was they liked Simon’s interactions with machines and they wanted more of it.  What could be more positive?  Except if I take it too literally, I could bog down my lean, mean narrative speed with random conversations and divergences.  These may entertain that reader, or most readers, even. But it wouldn’t be right for the story.

You have to accept or reject feedback in moderation.  Never forget the story you were first inspired to tell. Weigh every piece of feedback against this standard: Does this feedback get me closer to the story that is in my head?  If it does (and often it does, we NEED extra pairs of eyes to see and weigh and evaluate our stories), then accept that feedback, use it to improve your story. If the answer is no, then reject that feedback and forget it.  With one caveat…if a lot of people are giving the same feedback, pay attention to it, even if it goes against what you were trying to do. It may mean that what you’re trying for doesn’t have a wide market or isn’t well executed or is a bad idea. It happens.

The fact is, if you want to write for any audience, for any other person, you have to submit your work to other people. You have to let them judge it.  IT, not you.  All they are evaluating is your work, no matter what they say.

Take the feedback, digest it and then use it or discard it and MOVE ON. Don’t let feedback slow you down. Keep writing, keep submitting and…keep in mind how it feels when it’s your turn to critique someone else’s work.  There is something to be learned, even from the most negative feedback, even if it’s how not to do it, yourself.

Keep going.

*which I don’t. I can’t WRITE one but I don’t hate the genre

**Of course, if they didn’t even finish reading it…well…that’s another handful of salt. Though ask them where they stopped. That might be worth looking at, even if they are some nut.

***and have a plan to kill everyone in the room.  Or maybe that’s from the USMC’s writing guidelines?

So this is a week late.  What can I say, I got sick and got a puppy.  :)

The Fairwood Writers are a critique group that started about 25 or so years ago.  They’re an invitation-only group that has changed membership a bit over the years but is still very active. They also run the writers workshop at Norwescon.  I highly recommend submitting, it does not have an additional fee and it is a good way of toughening up your skin and getting critiques from professional writers and editors.  You can submit novel excerpts or a short story.

Short stories are critiqued Round-Robin, with a mix of other writers as well as pros.  Everyone reads everyone’s story prior to the critique and they go around the room commenting on what worked and what didn’t.

Novels are critiqued different.  You go in, alone, to face a panel of four pros.  You sit, as quietly as you can, while they each take turns giving you’re their critique. Then at the end, you can respond back and ask questions.  It’s not easy to take but it is one of your best shots at finding out what published authors think of your work.

That’s not to say they’ll all agree, of course.  If anything, it’s a bit heartening to see how some things that really bother some readers, get glossed over by another. It’s all just feedback, all just opinion.  And you have to take it like that.   But I’m skipping ahead a bit.

This year, my critiquers were: Rhiannon Held (moderating), Alma Alexander, Jak Koke and Peter Dennis Pautz. Each were great and gave very useful feedback, even those who didn’t care for my story*.  We talked, or they talked and I listened, about the sample chapters and about the novel structure as a whole, as outlined in my synopsis.  Some were focused on formatting and font** while others discussed character choices and worldbuilding.  They pointed out teases that were actually annoying and made good suggestions to have Simon interact with machines even more.

All of my critiquers brought something useful to the table. I am very grateful to each and every  one of them. Thank you, if you’re reading.

It isn’t easy getting critiqued but it is essential if you’re serious about becoming a professional writers.  It really is valuable getting experienced writers, who don’t know you (or just met you, Hi Jak!), giving you the benefit of their opinion.   You will find out which hooks worked.  Where your character development or motivation is weak.  You will find out if your character voice is strong. Most of all, you’ll find out if they would keep reading and that’s the ultimate question.

In the end, all the feedback is just that.  Hard on the ears but it’s up to you to decide what you want to do about it. It is your story, not theirs.  Now, if all four people love the same thing…you’re probably doing that write. If all of them hate something else…you’re probably doing it wrong.  Take it all in, weigh it, digest it.  I suggest not even looking at the notes for a while. Then, when it’s time to revise, all those words, of wisdom and of otherwise, will stand out and you can hear them without defensiveness.

I highly, highly, highly recommend this writers workshop to anyone who wants to take their story to the next level.

*or more accurately, Simon, my protagonist for The Mageborn Mechanic

** Really? That’s what’s going to be a hangup?  I’m tempted to start using Comic Sans.

Well.  THIS may be a monkey wrench into my writing plans, but it's a welcome one. This is my new pup, Logan Tiberius. He's a Rottie, about 8 weeks old.  He love attention...well...needs it, really. But he's adapting to the loss of his littermates pretty well. After the first bonding week, we're going to try to wean him onto being on his own.   

Here you see him claiming on of my shirts and a very vanquished Easter Duck.  Poor, poor duck.  He won't be long for this world, I fear.

And here is Logan outside, sleeping. I really, really want to get him crate-broken so he can stay inside more.  Right now, I'm letting him outside unsupervised only for short durations.

Eventually, I'm hoping to be able to write with him in the room, once he's housebroken and learns 'down, stay' well.