Mark Andrew Edwards

Sent off my Mad Scientist story to my critique group.  There’s one or two sentences I may cut or change radically but it’s one of the sillier things I’ve written.  I guess I could try to do a serious Mad Scientist story, someone descending into madness could be an interesting challenge to write, but the sub-genre in general seems to have its tongue in cheek.

Lots of submissions this week for us Wordslingers.  Very good to see.  I can’t wait to dig in and read them.   With so many, I’m not going to be able to wait until Friday night, though.  :)  Ah well, the discipline will be good for me.

I also sent off my synopsis to our novel editing teacher, Lois Brandt.  The bloody thing sprawled out to six pages, even cutting some subplots. I may go back to the snowflake method, starting with a one-sentence summary* and then expanding out to a paragraph, then a page.  MAYBE I can go from that into three pages.  We’ll see. I’ll have to do it when I send “The Mageborn Mechanic” out to editors (and Donald Maass Agency) later this spring.

Apart from critiques, I’m also going to start outlining my next novel, which I want to work on at the Rainforest Writer’s Retreat. I’ve decided to go a sequal to Smooth Running.  I’m planning to get a trilogy finished and up on Amazon/B&N/iBooks while I try to sell Mageborn Mechanic to the New York houses.  So I’ll be brainstorming and outlining and daydreaming for the next week or so.  I have a general idea of where the story was supposed to go but I’m thinking I can probably raise those stakes a lot. I’ve learned a lot about plot and story since that first novel.

Finally, I’m going to refresh my memory of Andrea Host’s “Lab Rat One” and get a review up, soonish. I’m really impressed with her writing. I’m reading “The Ranger’s Apprentice”, another , traditionally-published YA novel and her work is at least as good, maybe better. I’d really like to get her book into more people’s hands. Maybe I can convince her to do an interview here. I’d like to do author interviews and help in my small way, other writers.

*An 18 year old with a magical gift for understanding machines gets blackmailed into stealing data from a government server.

Time for more accountability posts.  I decided to do the 'write 1, sub 1' challenge...though in true slacker fashion, I haven't signed up on the web site. Ah well, it's more important to do it than to sign up on some site, right?  So...did I?  Well, yes and no.

To my surprise, I didn't get a short story finished this week but I did submit one for publication. (as a side note, boy, it's hard to find pro fantasy short story markets)  I sent off 'A Reaping' to Spinetingler.  We'll see what happens.

So what went wrong?  Writing is usually the easy part. Heck, I banged out 28 short stories in 30 days last year.  What happened this week?  Well, two culprits: Star Wars The Old Republic and a general malaise.  Basically, I didn't manage distractions and when I did have my hinder in the Throne of Writing(tm), I didn't always write.  Sometimes I edited. Sometimes I did other writing work, but I didn't stay focused on my short story and push on through. Not to say the short story I was working on was perfect. I think that's why I paused at about 3~4k words.  The story I'm writing might be too big for a short story.  But I'll see what I can do tonight.

We are moving locations for the Cloud City Wordslingers for a couple months, to accomotate the editing class.  Three of my fellow Wordslingers are attending with me: Andrew Williams, Folly Blaine and Mila.  I'd like to get more of us attending classes together, we'll see how schedules and money work out for people. I'd like to start setting up some kind of scholarship fund for classes to help out Wordslingers.  Money's tight as it, is though. We'll see what happens in the next couple months.

I also had my first Editing class at the North Annex of Bellevue College. Nice place, not hard to find.  The class was good, too but its going to be a bigger time commitment than expected.  The good part of this is I expect to have The Mageborn Mechanic in pretty good shape for submission by the end of this, the bad part is trying to find time for my other writing and editing. Ah well, it's a challenge and it's good to stretch myself. Pressure seems to make me more productive.

That's bad news for my Star Wars toons.

There's a lot I'd like to be doing tonight but I'm guessing I'll spend the night working on Wordslinger critiques.  That's ok, I like reading what my fellow writers are working on and giving them my thoughts about how to make it better.  So I thought I'd share a little bit about how I do critiques.

Let's start with the nuts-and-bolts:  I use MS Word and the 'track changes' features to add my notes and corrections.  After a lot of trial and error (I used to just type my notes into the text itself, in a different color/font), this seems to be the best way to go for readability for me and the person I'm giving my notes to.  Though, I do like the 'strike through' font feature for deleted/changed words.


The first thing I look at is: does the beginning of the story/chapter grab me?  I try to look at it as if I were an editor selecting something from the slush pile, since that's the boat all us Wordslingers are riding in.  If I can't find a hook, I'll call that out, maybe suggest one. Sometimes, the 'true start' of the story is a page or two further down.

Next is the protagonist. Do I get an idea of who they are, where they are, what they look like?  I need to know, pretty early, the age and gender and general culture of the character.  I know some people like experimental stories where that's up in the air, but I don't like it. It's just me, but androgynous characters - in name or detail' are too amorphous to engage my interest.  I'm hoping that the main character has a clear voice, that they don't sound like anyone else in the story. I think that's important.  It's also important to me that I like the characters, at least the protagonist. If I find myself wishing for someone to smack or shoot someone, they'd better be the bad guy, not the main character or the main character's sidekick/love interest.

Then I move on to tone. What is this story supposed to do?  Am I supposed to laugh?  Is it supposed to be action-packed? Suspenseful?  Full of wonder and discovery?  I feel the tone and expectations of a story need to get set at the beginning.  As writers much more experienced than I am have put it, "Your opening paragraphs/pages make a promise to the reader.  Your job as a writer is to fulfill those promises."

Plot is important, too.  So why is it so far down the list? Plot is story, more or less and we're all trying to be storytellers here.  (Though we do have some stylists.  Folly, Stephanie and Shannon write some sentences I want to curl up with.)  But to be honest, characters and situations come first. They are the hooks.  The resolution of the situation, the plot, needs to satisfy me but it's not the first thing I look at.  A lot of times, the plot isn't apparent at first and I like to give a writer time to get things clear to me. But I do need a clear plot, at least in retrospect.  I don't want any refriderator moments*.

Along the way, I'm looking at typos, word usage and sentences. Not for beauty, though I do notice that from time to time, but for clarity.  I'm no Hemmingway or Chandler, but there is a lot to be said for simple, clear sentences.  Our minds can take a drop of purple a long way, there's no need, I feel, to layer on adjectives and adverbs in every line.  I'm not the best at close line edits but I'll call out anything that jars me or makes it hard to read the submitted work.  I tell you, I wince every time I send out a first draft for critique. So much so, that I'm slowing down my sharing output so I can be sure I'm at least doing a line edit before sending my stuff out to the Wordslingers. It's just a question of respect for my reader. I don't want to waste their time catching things I can catch.

Finally, we get to the ending.  The ending works best when it echoes the beginning but it doesn't has to. I just has to 'work'.  It has to satisfy.  Now, endings are my weak point.  I just haven't nailed them, yet.  I hope to.  That's a challenge for me, to envision the ending before I start a story. If I can do that, I think the story/novel works.  If nothing else, it helps to know when you're done and it helps you with the pacing of the story. You can judge when and where to put your plot twists if you know what the ending is.  Not to mention if you know how your character ends up, you start thinking about who they were at the start of the story and hint at that change right from the start.  But this should probably be a post of it's own. I'll just say, in closing, that I want to leave a story or chapter wanting to immediately read what's next from that author.  If I feel like 'thank goodness that's over with', then that ending didn't work for me. If I am gritting my teeth wating for the next chapter (Looking at you, Shannon), then those stories and chapters do work.




*those are those thoughts you get on your way to the refridgerator where you say to yourself, "Hey, that doesn't make any sense" or "Wait, was Luke making out with his sister?  Dude, what if they'd gone all the way?!"  HT to TVtropes.com

I'm still looking into setting up a group blog for the Cloud City Wordslingers.  If I can get folks interested in it, I think it could work out pretty well. Not to mention, one blog article a week shouldn't be too much of a burden for most folks.  I just need to decide if I should go with a blogger/blogspot account or pay hosting for a website we own.  The latter is perferable but the former is cheaper.  Hmmm.

That aside, I've been struggling with my short story writing for the past month or so. I've finished only a couple stories and I'm starting to get worried that I'm falling into my old habits: Starting a lot of things and not finishing them.  Before Smooth Running, I'd never finished a novel before.  That, more than anything, proved to me that I could not only be passionate about writing (which I was and still am) but that I could perform.  Now I'm getting performance anxiety again and it's all the fault of the 'hot young thing' over in the corner.

See, I've actually been getting some writing done, despite Star Wars: The Old Republic launching. (not as much as I could if I stopped..er didn't start...playing, though)  But what I'm writing is yet another sexytime novel that has 0 chance getting published under my own name.  

I feel like I should be working on short stories that I can send off to the pro markets. Good for my career, good practice, all that.  But what I'm enjoying writing is (currently) dark, sexy science fiction or dark, sexy fantasy. Fun to write but not good career-wise.  I also have editing to do, which I'm avoiding because writing > videogames > editing.

So I'm worried I'm backsliding, becoming a hobby writer instead of being a focused professional-to-be.  I know which I want.  But acting on that...aye, there's the rub. I don't know what the answer is, this time.  Except to keep trying, keep moving forward.  I do have some short story ideas. I just need to force myself to sit down and write them.  Maybe I'll try using a timer, Luna, one of the Wordslingers, uses an online timer to force herself to keep focused.  Might be worth trying.  Plus, I can reward myself with SWTOR if I sit and write (or sit and edit) for an hour without 'cheating'.

Our critique group has it's own hashtag on Twitter, now #wordslingers.  I'm also making plans to set up a shared blog or full-on website, once again, influenced by the awesome Inkpunks.

It was brought to my attention that the origin story of the Cloud City Wordslingers was lacking in panache.  Mea Culpa.  To remedy this clamity, we are going to have a writing contest.  In 1000 words or less, we are going to attempt to entertain you with the 'true origins' of the Cloud City Wordslingers. The winner will be the story with the most votes, or which gets published first.  So, if you're a short story editor of Fantasy or Science Fiction and you get a small avalanche of 'Cloud City' themed stories, you'll know what happened.

If my fellow authors agree, we'll post our stories up, either here or on our shared blog.  Phat Lewt for the winner includes Panera Bread 

Stay tuned.

Yet another reminder to myself NOT to write these posts in iPage. One backspace key and the frelling page refreshes, eating my updates.  Bah.

Sorry for Friday's silence, work got busy, but I have something great enough to make up for it.

I've been running a critque group I inherited for a few years. It's survived locations changes and the usual membership churn while keeping a hard core of dedicated, ambitious writers. Several of our writers are starting to get published, which thrilling and inspiring.  So we've decided to become a little more serious about our critique group.  We spent over an hour brainstorming group names, which was fun and occasionally even productive. :) 

I think all of us who've stuck with this bi-monthly group are serious about becoming professional writers.  We all write genre fiction: Fantasy, Sci-fi and Horror.  We've also been inspired by the Inkpunks and to an extent other writing groups like the Fairwood Writers and the legendary Inklings. We're dedicated to our writing passion, to improving our craft and to aiding and supporting each other. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present our writing group, the Cloud City Wordslingers.

Luna Lindsey.  Luna is my co-leader, she picks up the slack when I'm not around. She has a wonderful eye for detail and an excellent ear for storytelling.  Her critiques are gold.  She is also self publishing her work. Her first novella can be purchases here* and she is hard at work editing her next novel for another self publish release. You can find her online at www.lunalindsey.com and on Twitter @lunalindsey.

Stephanie Herman.  Stephanie has been with the group longer than anyone, apart from Luna. She is already a pro at worldbuilding and writes descriptions that are vivid AND reveal character details. She does that so well I fully intend to steal from her...once I figure out just how she does what she does.  Stephanie works full time as a wildlife rehabilitator, which is its own big bag of awesome. She's going to go all the way and I'll proud to help her any way I can.  She can be found online at http://wildliterati.blogspot.com/ and on Twitter @wildliterati.

Shannon Peavey.  Shannon came to our group with a story so polished and entrancing that I couldn't believe she wasn't already a professional. She is, just not a professional writer (yet). She is a professional horse trainer, a concert pianist and a damn good writer. I feel lucky to know her. She can be found on Twitter @shannonpv.

Folly Blaine.  She has a secret identity, which I will not reveal, lest her new writing fans swarm all over her house and demand more short stories from her.  She is witty, talented and can drink a sailor under the table. Folly is an experienced playwright and that shows in her work. She has several flash fiction pieces published and just got accepted to an anthology, Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations, coming this spring. She can be found online at http://www.follyblaine.com/ and on Twitter @Follyblaine.

Andrew Williams   Andrew is another rising success for himself and our group. He has published several short stories and, like Folly, has a story accepted in the anthology, Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations. He has a good critical eye, which is invaluable in helping the group polish their stories. He is very serious about his writing career but, despite that, is a lot of fun to have around. he can be found online at http://offthewrittenpath.com/ and on Twitter @thewrittenpath.

Andrew Rosenberg.  Andrew has been with the group for a long time, nearly as long as Luna and Stephanie.  He is a master of creating steam-powered things in his writing and in his costuming.  (Yeah, he goes farther than just slapping a pair of goggle on a top hat) he is also very serious about his writing career and is always good about pointing out what doesn't work in the stories he's critquing.  He can be found online at http://blog.writerunner.com and on Twitter @iapetus999.

J. Boswell.  Boswell is a young and growing writer.  His YA novel, The Dweller on the Threshold is a mix of H.P. Lovecraft, Jungian psychology and super-powered wild Kung Fu anime-style mayhem. You know, your normal coming of age novel.  He always has a penetrating insight into just what works and what does not in a story.  His descritive abilities of monsters and mayhem have no equal.  We WILL get him online, in Twitter or blog form, one of these days.

Mila Webb.  Mila writes gothic stories that cross the line between Fantasy and Horror. She is not Louise Brooks but she appreciates the implied compliment (don't hit me, Mila). She has a feline ability to sit and watch and wait and then insert just the right comment or phrase to highlight what needs to be fixed in a story.  We just need to apply direct peer pressure to her so we can read more of her wonderful stories. She can be found on Twitter @mcobweb.


And last but not least, our founder and member emeritus, Steve Wilson.  Steve started this group and set up the structure that we've largely kept: stories submitted a week in advance, everyone goes around and provides feedback for the story, everyone hands in a copy of the crique to the story owner with the remarks on paper.  We've moved to annotated MS Word docs instead of printouts but the principles are still the same.  It wasn't quite Milford rules and it worked well for us. He kept things organized and kept things positive.  He writes military sci-fi, my favorite genre, and from time to time he'll drop in a story for us to critique remotely. We just wish he still lived in Seattle, we miss him.



*http://www.amazon.com/Make-Willing-the-Prey-ebook/dp/B003Z0CV68/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324310008&sr=8-1