Six Sentence Sunday: The Old Man in the Forest
Once, I came to a spot where an old tree had fallen across the path. Someone had cut out a large chunk from the middle where it had blocked the…
Once, I came to a spot where an old tree had fallen across the path. Someone had cut out a large chunk from the middle where it had blocked the…
Receiving critiques and knowing what to do with them is hard. As a writer, you need to get people to read your stories and give you a perspective other than your own. Fresh eyes can tell you so much about a story: is the picture in your head actually coming through on the page? Have you left out important pieces, needlessly repeated yourself, or gone off on a tangent that just doesn’t make sense? A reader can tell you all of this and give you suggestions for improving your work that you may never be able to think of on your own. People who are willing to read your work-in-progress and give you feedback about it are an invaluable resource, whether you pay them or they volunteer their time.
But how do you decide what to do with those critiques once you’ve received them? That is the challenge. Sometimes people may not understand your work, or it’s not really their type of story, or they may have suggestions that you just don’t agree with. This is complicated when you are getting feedback from multiple people, who can often contradict one another. “More description!” says one person. “The prose drones on without any plot!” says another. How do you maneuver through the myriad responses and try to find the elements that will actually help you improve your writing?
If you've ever tried to write a story about a type of mythological creature before (say, a vampire) then you probably already know what this issue is like. How do…
I used to write down my dreams that I could remember in the morning. I kept a dream journal next to my bed and write in it when I woke…
On a writing forum that I visit, there was a recent discussion about defining fantasy sub-genres, specifically urban fantasy, contemporary fantasy, and magical realism. Genre definitions can get tricky because…
I knew that I wanted to be a writer since I was about eight. I'd already written and illustrated a few stories for fun, but then I read Harriet the…
Working on draft 3 of Small Town Witch, and it's going slowly. I had the first draft finished back in March, at 80k. I was pretty confident at the time.…
I am twenty-eight, and while I would not say that my life has been a waste up until now, I want to accomplish more than I have. Somewhere in my…
I scrapped another writing project. I still have it saved, because I don’t like to throw things away, but I’m not working on it anymore and I don’t know if…
I miss being a writer. I miss the person that I was when I was writing all the time. I miss having that need to.write, the compulsion, that made me…