Monday, May 20, 2013

Another May 12 PS





Okay sent in a new one to F&SF. But oops I believe I forgot the stamp on the SASE. Not sure how F&SF deals with that. Some markets would never contact me. A couple would go ahead and use one of their stamps. I believe I did this a couple of years ago but I forget what happened. 

So we shall see next week.

I wonder what Scott P. At S&SF thinks about all the alchemy tales he is getting from me lately.  The one I sent last Saturday was one, and even though I’m skipping next week, the one after will be one and probably the week after that.  


And still working on me Q3 WotF story.

Recently received a new crit for that story...now this one is the one I wanted. Lots of nitpicks found. The last three crits had a total of six nitpicks which I found amazing if true. This one has like eight and more per page. Some pages have so many side comments that the list goes beyond the page--have to click on an arrow to get more. 

As I said I wanted it but at the same time Ugh, so many. That's after I tried to find them.

Some are missing words--some of those are done on purpose--I noticed that many pros skip and-s and then-s.

The person who did this crit also split some of my sentences but a few or those were done on purpose to--we tend to think in phrases not whole sentences especially during action. 

I feel better about this story than my Q2 and some of the others I sent in. I think it has everything it needs, is the right length, good descriptions, try-fail cycles and even some angst. Of course I have thought that a time or two before and I ended up with no evidence that anyone else agreed with me.  And it's my writing so even if it is better--in writing and in story--than previous tales I sent in that still may not get it very far. But neither of those thoughts interfere with how I feel about it.   



Okay, an addition to my ranting last time.

I forgot to mentioned that when Dean Wesley Smith called me to say that I was a natural born storyteller he said that I had one problem that could be fixed. Grammar. So I bought some grammar books and read them--reread them--reread certain sections. That is when my writing improved for a while. Maybe that ingredient that I keep getting wrong is grammar. I might have reforgotten something after that period of time. 

I have also wondered if I tried too hard to do what editors want and lost my voice.

I don’t know if either of those things is true or if fixing them would help that much. (Shoulder shrug) wouldn’t hurt to reread the grammar books a couple of more times though. 

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I'm working on turning lead into Gold