Writers are so good at beating themselves up for all sorts of reasons, some valid, some not so much. Here’s some encouragement for dealing with writerly quilt.
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Writers are so good at beating themselves up for all sorts of reasons, some valid, some not so much. Here’s some encouragement for dealing with writerly quilt.
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"The Wayward Wormhole, a new evolution of writing workshops has arrived. And I’m here for it! Geared more towards intermediate speculative fiction writers, the application process doesn’t ask about demographics like some other workshops and focuses entirely on your writing. The television free Spanish castle made for an idyllic and intimate setting while the whole experience leaned more in the direction of bootcamp slumber party. Our heavy and constant workload was offset by the family style meals together with our marvelous instructors. The Wayward Wormhole is not for the faint of heart but if you’re serious about supercharging your writing, then this is the place to do it."
So, as some may know, I’ve been working on a particular book for a loooong time. Looooong time. It’s the first in a fantasy trilogy and this manuscript has undergone so many convulsions and rewrites that I was getting to the point where I was worried I’d kill it if I went much further. Based on some solid feedback from an interested agent, I started wrestling with it again and performed some major surgery: excised a number of points of view (which will end up in Book 2), removed some extraneous (but charming!) bits misguidedly intended as textual amuse-bouches between chapters, and switched one point of view from 3rd person past to 1st person present.
I was encouraged, but worried that the patient might not have survived the surgery. So I dumped it on my writing group, whose members rose whole-heartedly to the challenge, and we critted it last Saturday.
That, in an ideal world, is what a writing group does. They don’t pull punches when something needs fixing, but they do it in a way that helps you figure out how to fix it. Their feedback is valuable; their support even more precious. So to the wonderful folks who valiantly waded through the book despite the lateness of my turning it in – thank you. Persephone d’Shaun, Caren Gussoff, Keffy Kehrli, Tod McCoy, Vicki Saunders, and Emily Skaftun, you all rock. Consider yourselves thoroughly appreciated.
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All taken from http://www.helpineedhelp.com/#/
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(science fiction, short story) Because mermaids lay eggs, hundreds at a time, at least that kind did. And the natural-born ones, they didn’t have human minds guiding them. They were like sharks—they ate, they killed, they ate. Most of the original human mermaids had gotten out when they found out that the seas were full of chemicals, or that instead of whale songs down there, they heard submarine sonar and boat signals. When the last few found out that they were spawning whether they liked it or not, they got out too. Supposedly one or two stayed, and now they live in the sea with their children, twice as mean as any of them.
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