diary of an Endorphin Junkie

This has been a productive weekend. I finished some revisions to Door of No Names on Friday. It was reviewed at a much-revived Adhoc Writer's Group meeting today and I received very little criticism. I may even have won over someone who professed once that it wasn't a story they would ever like.

That said, I did get some really solid feedback that I was able to incorporate. I like the changes, and I think it's really strong now. I'm glad. It's time to start submitting this and focus on other stories now.

An old friend of mine who is a professional editor has apparently decided I write well enough that she's going to keep giving me advice and hints.

This normally would make me happy, but due to the absolutely excellent things she had to say in the first review session I'm pretty much giggling in ecstasy. She not only nailed the problem with Children head on, she nailed it hard in the heart in a way that nobody else has seen before. This is going to be so very awesome.

I'm also (hopefully) going to start working with a new writer's group down here in the South Bay. Likewise this group seems to have a really good feeling, and they are actually writing and publishing so it's a lot more focused and practical. Awesomeness abounds.

I love writing and I love stories. And I love getting useful reviews and feedback on my stories. But I find myself very frustrated with requests to babysit people enough to write 1000 words to explain 100 relevant words.

At first I had lots of problems with delivery. Reviewers were very helpful with getting me to nail down the details well enough that everyone understands the story arc. Now it seems that every critique is just a list of the questions that any intelligent person might consider when reading the story. Yes, so I got you to this question clearly -- I succeeded, right? No, apparently not. Everyone wants 2000 words of exposition explaining every single character's motivations.

If I must explain every single detail, every motivation, every thought someone has ... what is that? It might be some form of art, but it's incredibly obvious and unsubtle art. And it is not interesting.

I don't live in a world where I understand every motivation going on around me. I don't expect to. And stories which explain every thought of every person bore the snot out of me. My stories are about real people, in real situations... where you never really know what every character's motivations were. These stories are engaging. Explaining every single detail, every motivation of every character is not.

I'm not going to change that.

And I'm going to leave out than more than half of the critiques contain scientific absurdities as criticism. Hm. It takes a ship nearly 900 years to reach a destination. If it is crippled on the way, why isn't it picked up by other ships traveling nearby... really? Really? OF COURSE , there must be hundreds of ships leaving every day for destinations a millennium distant. Doesn't everyone like to travel that way? *headdesk*

So it's been a while since I had time to consume fiction, sadly. I'm just starting to catch up. I'm about 400 pages in to Fortress in the Eye of Time and I've gotten to see two plays this week. And I'm seeing many things I never saw before, mostly about the structure and the pacing of delivery.

I've always loved good prose (written) and good delivery (a/v) but I never really thought about the framing that holds up the plot until I saw Jay Lake's post about framing for a story. (will link as soon as I can find that post) Somewhere between thinking a lot about that post (it inspires that) and working and reworking my stories, I've come to understand these issues a lot better.

Well, now I apparently can't read or watch anything without observing the framing and the pacing. saycestsay and jaylake both warned me this would happen, so I'll blame it all on them.

I'm really glad we saved the semipro-zine Hugo award. And I quite literally teared up when Weird Tales won the Hugo. I voted for Clarkesworld #1 and Weird Tales #2 and never expected either one to win against the big boys. I was shocked and gladdened to see that I underestimated our own.

But this really brings out a big topic. We really need to support our semi-pro zines better. Jim Baen's Universe is closing up shop because they couldn't get a mere 5000 subscribers.

I'm guilty on that one. This month I'm going to review everything I read and could read and figure out how to best support our small zines. More on this later.

Children got reviewed by Elizabeth Bear, Mark van Name and the other workshop participants at Worldcon yesterday.

It seemed to get pass (good story, good characters, good voice) for everything except grounding the reader in the environment. Because I don't ground the reader well, it's easy for the reader to not feel attached embedded in the stories. And to miss some of the keys essential to connecting the dots in my stories.

This is actually not a surprise - I had kindof figured this out indirectly by analyzing comments from my First Look readers. (awesome people, every one of them) The good news is that I got some explicit advice from Mark and Elizabeth about how exactly to improve this situation, and what exactly they thought failed. Their advice wasn't easy fixes for the story. It was concrete advice that is absolutely going to make me a better writer when I finish learning to write well enough that my stories aren't lacking in this way.

I need to build and develop better skills for doing this, and then return to this story and fix it. I'm going to finish Descending Pitch first and try to work on these skills there, and then come back to Children.

I participated in an incredible panel called "First Contact" lead by Lawrence and Stanley Schmidt (executive editor of Analog). We split into two different species, invented our own languages and had a first contact situation.

Napping an hour after the panel the story Descending Pitch formed fully in my mind, but I'm too tired to write it all tonight. I got 357 words down before I set it aside and passed out for the night.

So one of the mysteries of publishing was finally explained to me yesterday.

The phrase for writing a story, finishing it and then submitting it on hopes and prayers that someone might publish it is called On Spec.

This has always confused me, mostly because in my (paying) career the term On Spec means to deliver a quotation to build something to the specification. It's exactly the opposite -- you build exactly what you have been told to build, and you never do it without a contract signed in advance.

It took another author who likewise has a paying technology job to understand my confusion and clue me in on this one. jaylake explained that it's not specification, it's On Speculation...

Aaaaaaaah.

I think I've finally put together the right set of changes to address the excellent advice given to me by various readers over the last year, and I've shot the hopefully final version of Door of No Names off to various first readers for confirmation.

Much thanks to Michele Coleman and Edith Maor, both of who actually hit the nail squarely on the head for the problems with the story -- even if it took me a long time to realize they were right.

I'll be pushing hard to finish the first draft of Children tomorrow.

My first piece of published flash is up at http://www.everydayfiction.com/

Or if you read this later, a direct link to the story is:
http://www.everydayfiction.com/reality-fails-by-jo-rhett/