I’m getting quite a few critiques on Black Hole Son. The first chapter is in Critters right now, and I think it’s gotten even more buzz than either Blood 2 or Avatar. It’s Monday and I’ve gotten ten critiques. Three of those, though, were not so nice. One’s first line was that I’ve gotten quite a reputation on Critters, and that it’s not good. He then goes through a 4,090 word critique (of my 7,000 word piece) where he nitpicks every paragraph, every sentence, every word, was met with some harsh, and spiteful-just-for-the-sake-of-being-spiteful comment. I don’t know why, I’ve never critiqued anything of this guy’s as far as I can…
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Star Dragon: I Hope There’s No Midterm
Today was a reading day, and boy are my eyes tired. I finished Star Dragon, which seems to echo a lot of what Mr. Scalzi has been saying about the state of Sci-Fi lit. He says that it involves a lot of science and physics and astronomy, and all that takes away from making a good story, and from encouraging newcomers to read it. In short, “it’s math”. Now clearly, Mr. Star Dragon did a butt load of research on his topic. It involves a space ship which generates acceleation through creating two singularities on each side and wobbling back and forth, then going to a binary star system where…
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Avatar – The Reckoning
All writers are insecure. And I was insecure to begin with, so that’s like a double stuff oreo of insecurity. It seems like my skill in writing is two steps forward, two steps back. Here’s the example, after I had my Stephen King dream on Sunday, I needed some comfort because I was feeling insecure that my story – Avatar – is now on Critters, but hasn’t gotten many reviews. That disappointed me because, unlike Blood 2, this represents my current writing talent. This one I really tried on, I made it a subject I know, I blended humor, drama. It’s not a whiny kid. There’s a plot. And so…
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I Can Critiques Blood 2?
I think I might have found someone who’s actually going to give me a fair and complete critique of Blood 2. I’m doing a novel exchange with someone who contacted me through Critters, and I’m looking at her story right now. I feel a little bad cause her story is near half mine’s length. I’m also worried I might be too harsh on her, I’m not trying to be, but I’m trying to teach some lessons here. Not that I really have the authority to do so. But her writing sounds a lot like me when I was first starting back in high school, so at least it’s not drudgery…
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Critters – You’re up to bat. Don’t strike out.
BTW, I forgot to mention that Blood 2 – Unit 5 (of 30) is on Critters now. No reviews yet. This is the last of my Blood sections that will be going up there, at least for now, because I calculated at this rate it’ll take two and a quarter years before the full story is up there. I could break into bigger chunks, but nobody’s reading it as it is. Thank god for my wife, patiently treading through the murky pose. This is one of the downfalls of Critters. People get to review what they want, and they usually review whatever’s the shortest. I think once something gets enough…
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Diaries and FictionSlamming
This week I’ve got some diary entries to write, so there may not be much in productive words. Plus I’m tired as hell today. Running on auto-pilot. I will talk about FictionSlamming though. I sent them my story in April and still don’t have a technical “judgement” on it, on whether I’m “in” or not. I had one clear yes, one clear no, and ambiguous comments that mostly consisted of criticism, but no vote. Last time I got a clear resolution from one of the moderators, but that was in a month or less. Where is it now? No one’s bothered to answer. Not that I really care anymore. Critters…
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The Politics of Critters
I have an interesting situation going on in the Critters critiques labels these days. Three weeks ago I got a fulfillment of a “Request for Dedicated Readers” (people who volunteer to read long works. It was accompanied with a suggestion to check out her Yahoo! Groups fantasy critique group. I looked at it, 10 members, and since I haven’t written any fantasy, I mentally declined. Well, over the course of the three weeks, I get three or four more e-mails suggesting I join. It’s like spam. I think about telling her to stop sending me these things, but she’s reading my long novel, and I haven’t gotten many takers, so…
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The Submissions Keep Rolling
Horrible story I had to critique for Critters today. 50% exposition, cliche story, dull characters. And everybody talks in midievil (I gotta learn how to spell that. That and suspicious are my two words I never seem to get) speak. “Yes, Mother. Tell the young man that he should not wait any longer.” No one important uses contractions. That’s for the masses. Goddammit, write how people talk. I had a good run of luck with some decent stories, but this one broke my streak. You know it doesn’t look good when I’m looking at a half page of comments in raw form alone. I wonder what gets in some people’s…
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The First Critiques
I’ve gotten my first critiques back for the week, can’t say I expect to get more. Just like I thought, they found the things that I never expected to come under fire blazing. And things I didn’t think mattered to shine out (in a bad way), like the prologue sequence. It’s more of a prologue that exemplifies the theme of the novel, but it seemed like people didn’t like it or didn’t get it. I frankly never thought about it that much (which might be an indication it doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things), because that’s a part I wrote years and years ago, and never needed…
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Story: Missing for five weeks
I’m a member of the Critters web site, which is a critque/workshop site for SF/F/H writing. So far it’s the most decent site I’ve seen (I was previously on Zoetrope, but wasn’t getting enough responses, and was limited in what I could submit). I know a lot of us critcize how it’s like a 5% success rate on getting published, but reading some of these things, I can see why. In the four or five weeks, I’ve crtiqued 9 stories, and only one was of real publishable quality. It’s just that they don’t know how to write, I haven’t run into any that have real grammar, spelling, or such problems,…