O | The Online Writing Workshop for SF & F Newsletter, May 2002
W | http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com
W | Become a better writer!
| - - CONTENTS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
- Workshop Partner Information
- Workshop News:
Workshop enhancements
Discussion moderation
The latest member challenge
Ways to pay for a membership
Scholarship fund
Bonus payments
Price comparisons
Opportunity for Canadian members
- Editors' Choices for April submissions
- Reviewer Honor Roll
- Publication Announcements
- Workshop Statistics
- Feedback:
Special reflection from author Karin Lowachee
Tips from members (and others)
| - - WORKSHOP PARTNER INFORMATION - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
Online Writing Workshops's partnership with Del Rey Books ended on
April 6, 2002. We appreciate their support over the past year. The
workshop is now member-supported, and we appreciate even more those of
you who have paid your membership fees! We've set our rates as low as
we can make them and still (we hope) stay solvent. For more
information on membership fees and to extend your membership, go to
http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/memberships.shtml
| - - WORKSHOP NEWS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
WORKSHOP ENHANCEMENTS
Look at the top of any page of individual reviews of a submission for
a quick link-enabled list of all reviews, newest listed first.
The "number of views" statistic listed for your submissions (on the
Your Info page) has been joined by the "number of viewers" statistic.
The "view" number shows how many times your submission has been
clicked on and viewed--every visit by the same person is counted as a
separate view. (The author's views are not counted.) The number of
submission "viewers," on the other hand, indicates unique
visitors--one person looking at a submission three times would
generate three views but only one viewer. (Again, the author's views
don't change the viewer count.) We started tracking viewers as well
as views on 5/20/02, so older submissions don't have any viewer
data--just view data.
DISCUSSION MODERATION
Our discussion mailing list for workshop members,
oww-sff-writing@yahoogroups.com, and our chat list,
oww-sff-chat@yahoogroups.com, are now being moderated by Amber van
Dyk. Many thanks to our "retiring" moderator, Charlie Finlay, who
will still be handling workshop support. Amber has been moderating
our horror workshop's mailing list for the last year and has long been
a member of both workshops. The chat list is anything-goes; the
writing list is for writing and workshop-related discussion only, and
is not moderated message-by-message but is kept on track by our
eagle-eyed but reasonably lenient moderator. Let us know if you have
any questions: support@sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com
THE LATEST MEMBER CHALLENGE
Some core members of the workshop have begun a monthly writing
challenge, open to all, in which writers submit stories or scenes on a
particular topic. Past topics have included pain, love, death, and
music. The May challenge is magical realism. The June challenge will
be "Rats in Bad Places." For the current rules and how-to
information, see a page maintained by a member:
http://www.thermeon.net/checkered/Challenge.html Basically, just
submit a piece on the current month's theme, put "Challenge" in your
title so other challenge participants can find it, and give at least
brief reviews to as many other challenge entrants as you can. Search
for titles containing "Challenge" to see some of the challenge
entries. We at OWW think this is great, but we aren't in charge. For
more information and to participate in choosing the challenge topics,
join the Writing discussion list
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/oww-sff-writing).
WAYS TO PAY FOR A MEMBERSHIP
In the U.S., you can pay by PayPal or send us a check or money order.
Outside of the U.S., you can pay via PayPal (though international
memberships incur a small set-up fee); pay via Kagi
(www.kagi.com--easier for non-U.S. people); send us a check in U.S.
dollars drawn on a U.S. bank (many banks can do this for you for a
fee); or send us an international money order (available at some banks
and some post offices). If none of those options work for you, you
can send us U.S. dollars through the mail if you choose, or contact us
about barter if you have interesting goods to barter (not services).
Questions or suggestions? E-mail support@sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com
and we'll help you out.
SCHOLARSHIP FUND
In response to member requests, we've established two ways to
help needy fellow members pay for their memberships beyond May 6:
--Give a gift membership. Just send us a
payment by whatever method you like, noting who the membership is for
and specifying whether the gift is anonymous or not. We will
acknowledge receipt to you and the member.
--Donate to our scholarship fund. We will use the fund to fully or
partially cover the costs of an initial paying membership for certain
active, review-contributing members whose situations do not allow them
to pay the full membership fee themselves. We'll give special
attention to dedicated members in foreign countries where exchange
rates and the local value of the U.S. dollar make $40/year pretty much
impossible. Charlie, our member liaison/tech-support person, will be
making these determinations along with other OWW staff, based on
requests from needy members and their workshop-participation histories.
BONUS PAYMENTS
The workshop costs only 77 cents per week (if you pay a year at a
time). But we know that many members feel that it's worth much more to
them. So here's your chance, if you feel the workshop is worth more
than we're charging, to award us with a bonus on top of your
membership fee. For example (with thanks to NPR)...
--Is the workshop worth a dollar a week? Award us a $12 bonus on
top of your $40 membership fee.
--Or could it be worth 15 cents a day instead of 11? (That would be a
$14.75 bonus. Except in a leap year.)
--Or is it worth $5 a month to you? Award us with a $20 bonus for a
total of $60 for the year.
--Maybe you feel it's worth $10 a month, prompting you to send us a
(gulp) $80 bonus. (We can always hope.)
Whatever the amount, 25% of any bonus payments we receive will go to
our support staff, sort of like a tip for good personal service. The
rest will be tucked away to lengthen the shoestring that is our budget
and keep us running!
See http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/bonuspayments.shtml to award
us a bonus payment or just find out a little more about Online Writing
Workshops, our company (including pictures!).
PRICE COMPARISONS
For a quick price/value comparison of our workshop and other online
learning opportunities for SF/F writers, see
http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/memberships_comparison.shtml
(it's also linked from the memberships area).
OPPORTUNITY FOR CANADIAN MEMBERS
Award-winning SF author Robert J. Sawyer will lead two multi-day SF
writing workshops this summer in Toronto. See
http://learn.utoronto.ca/liberal/events.asp for the Taddle Creek
Summer Writers Workshop, June 28 to July 1, and
http://www.humberc.on.ca/~writers/summer/index.html for the Humber
School for Writers, July 20 to July 26.
NEW WEB SITE FOR SF/F AUTHORS
FantasyFiction.Biz is a new online resource for budding authors, begun
by a former workshop member, Brandon S. Lay. He says: "Learn how to
format manuscripts, how to write query letters and synopses, and what
to consider when seeking an agent. Additionally, you can join forums
specifically created for Online Writing Workshop members where you can
exchange ideas and discuss writing tips otherwise left out of your
critiques. If you just want to do some light reading, read our
editorials and short stories, or submit your own and get the
recognition you deserve! Best of all, it's free!"
http://www.FantasyFiction.Biz
| - - EDITORS' CHOICES - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
The Editors' Choices are chosen from the submissions from the previous
month that show the most potential or otherwise earn the admiration of
our Editorial Board. One from each category (SF chapter, F chapter,
short story) is given a detailed review, meant to be educational for
others as well as the author. Reviews are written by our Resident
Editors, award-winning authors and instructors Kelly Link and Nalo
Hopkinson, or occasionally other writing pros. The reviews are
published on the site and in the newsletter. Close contenders for EC
will be listed here as runner-ups but won't get a review.
To view Editors' Choices on the workshop, go to the submission list
and click on "Editors' Choices" in the Submission Selector. Six
months of ECs will be archived there, with their editorial reviews.
Eligibility: In order to make sure that some of our most professional
members don't take too much attention away from other deserving
writers, we've decided that novels will be ineligible for EC
consideration if they have been chosen as previous ECs in any
six-month period (January-June and July-December).
Congratulations to this month's Editors' Choice authors!
Runner up, fantasy chapter: "Tides of Stone" by Noelle Carter
Editors' Choice, fantasy chapter/partial chapter: SEA CHILD, Ch. 13,
by Clover Autrey
A complex plot that does a good job of keeping its large cast of
characters distinct. Accurate or consistent use of vernaculars and
dialects; bravo for making sure that you got them right! An
intriguing race of aquatic humans co-existing with Homo Sapiens. Some
nice tensions/interactions amongst various characters.
Questions and observations:
--I found the Kalladies really interesting, especially since they have
some basis in theories of human evolution. I think they add a lot to
your plot. I'd like more of a sense that they have differences from
the land-bound humans. They're not totally alien, but they do have
different cultures and probably different body language and habits,
since they spend so much time in water. It would make the scene come
alive more if more of that were depicted. Elaine Morgan's book THE
DESCENT OF WOMAN theorizes about what some of the behaviours of the
Aquatic Ape might have been. It might be a useful text to read.
--The piece is sketchy in scene-setting (visual and sensory detail).
It's often difficult to know what to picture. Here's one place where
you do it well, using a small, incidental detail to give a scene
texture: "Barseen Blare hopped on one leg to avoid a fleeing speckled
hen that ran across the stronghold's outline sketched on the ground,
throwing sand. The giant woodsman gave it no heed." The hen is a nice
touch. By contrast, look at these two sentences: "Daire's cheeks
warmed, flushed with excitement. Images of champions fighting forces
of nature filled his mind." But what is he picturing? Without some
detail, your readers won't know what images to conjure up in their own
minds.
--Nalred the snake raider keeps grabbing at Paedra and invading her
personal space. This makes Daire see red. He keeps physically
threatening Nalred, but we never see how Paedra herself reacts to
Nalred's actions. Odd, since it's her body. It makes Paedra seem
like an inanimate pawn in a baiting game between Daire and Nalred,
rather than an adult who's capable of acting on her own behalf.
--I hope that there will be more about Nalred. He's a good foil for
Daire, and deserves to be complex and have complex motivations.
--The unalloyed evil of the Nephusim (good name--it conjures up images
of the Christian Celestial Host, to which Satan originally belonged)
feels too simplistic to be believable yet, and has a bit of a ring of
re-treaded Tolkien--not that Tolkien was simplistic by any means. From
what I've read in this excerpt, that thread of the plot feels weak and
derivative.
--There are unpronounceable words and names. Examples: "sraelight,"
"Dearbhla," and "Iilcaegine." Some of the names seem as though they
might be existing words in other languages, and so they're fine just
the way they are. But if there are places where you invent words, I
suggest that you take pains to make them look pronounceable and
memorable. Seconds after I've taken my eyes off the words "sraelight"
and "Iilcaegine," I've forgotten them. I have trouble telling them
apart when I do look at them. You especially want your characters'
names to be memorable and to roll trippingly off the tongue.
--You could stand to use more commas. Example: "Then seeing Daire's
confusion Taric added, 'our holy man.'" This needs a comma after
"then," and one after "confusion." I suggest you review the rules for
comma usage.
Needs clarification:
--The visionary, the Altde (another unpronounceable word), has lost both
legs below the knees, years before. The description of him is vague.
Does he have artificial legs? How is he walking?
--When Daire first sees the vision in the flames, he steps back,
startled. Yet he'd been sitting down, not standing.
--"Aacion Menowa's coming. I seen him. He's on his way down." Who's
saying this? There are no dialogue tags to clue us in.
Although the action in most of this chapter was pretty low-key, it
felt necessary to the plot. Though the scene-setting felt somewhat
sparse, the interactions amongst the characters and the plotting to
save their friends mostly held my interest until the scene with
Daire's vision, which depicted a two-dimensional evil entity who feels
too thinly drawn to carry his section of the story. I suggest that
you think through the Nephusim's motivations for bringing about
worldwide chaos, and try to make him more convincing as a character.
--Nalo Hopkinson
Editors' Choice, SF chapter/partial chapter: TLINGAT by Rebecca Willman
For me, the most striking aspect of TLINGAT was its world-building.
The world and the details about harvesting the Tlingat crop feel
lovingly created and thought through. I could picture this world. I
could almost taste the fruit and feel the weight of them. I felt that
I got a keen sense of what it might be like to be stuck in a tree with
a tornado bearing down on me, especially if I didn't know what a
tornado was. The author used sight, touch, taste and sound well (don't
forget smell!), and the effect was appealing and compelling. The
tornado was an exciting place to start the action and the text was
very cleanly written; there were almost no errors of grammar,
punctuation, spelling, etc and very few cliched phrases.
Issues to work on:
--No dialogue, no sense of other characters. This may be a
personal preference of mine, but when an excerpt goes on for too long
without dialogue, I begin to feel distanced from the text. I want the
protagonist to begin interacting with the people around her, and I
want to hear what they have to say to each other. A prologue can work
fine without dialogue, especially if it's a short prologue, but once
we get into the meat of the story, I would generally recommend taking
your readers as quickly as possible to interaction amongst characters.
For instance, when your protagonist is in the tree, harvesting, and
gets caught by a bad storm, presumably there are other women nearby in
other trees, also harvesting. Why don't we see or hear any of them?
How come they don't warn her? What are they doing while she's
frantically trying to climb down to safety? I understand that after
the storm, there _is_ no one left to speak with, but you have an
opportunity before the storm hits to show us the women climbing in the
trees, perhaps yelling back and forth; instructions, chatting, etc.
You might also show some of the people on the ground who might be
going about other daily activities. And after the storm, I would
think that the protagonist would be calling out the names of the
people in the village, hoping that some of them would answer her. As
it is, the village feels oddly unpeopled.
--You tell us what you're going to tell us before you've told us.
Look at the following quotations: "Each time the wind blows through
Rigel Pass, stirring the greenish yellow leaves of the towering
Tlingat trees, I will be reminded of that day, so many years past now,
when my life was changed forever" and "That night I slept without
dreams. It was the last time that I would be granted that blessing for
many years." For me, this ruins the immediacy of the novel. It gives
me a sense, correct or incorrect, that I already know what's going to
happen, and so I'm less likely to want to read on to discover what is
in fact going to happen. I recommend that you tell us events while
they're happening, not before they do.
--Info dumps. The whole prologue is devoted to a horticultural lesson
about the Tlingat fruit and its cultivation. The description is
interesting, but quickly starts to feel like being in school. I'd
recommend abandoning the prologue altogether (mind you, I often
recommend that, for all that my first two novels started with
prologues) and interspersing the interesting information which it
contains throughout the action of the first chapter or two. That
preserves a little bit of mystery; keeps your readers curious. We
will continue reading in order to find out more, and we will getting
the answers in tasty little sips, not in large, starchy, expository
lumps. Here's one of the many places where you've done a nice job of
giving us an important piece of information without breaking the
stride of the narrative: "Each full basket would be worth enough liat
to feed the people of my small village for a week." That's good. We
now know what the primary monetary unit of this region is called, yet
we've barely noticed that we've learned something.
Questions:
--Why are women the primary Tlingat farmers? You tell us that they
need to hold their breaths to harvest the seeds; do women have some
kind of biological advantage over men? Because in traditional
cultures, it's usually men who do the more physical labour.
--How long do the Tlingat trees take to grow? They're described as
being extremely tall at maturity.
--I wondered about that long climb that your protagonist makes with
badly broken ribs. After the first few minutes, she no longer seemed
to feel much pain. Her sense of pain doesn't seem to return until
well after she's found her brother. From what I know of broken ribs,
the pain would likely be excruciating, enough to render her
unconscious from time to time. Probably only desperation would keep
her moving at all. Every move would be agony. The acts of digging
through the ruins of her village and of lifting her baby brother to
her shoulder might well be impossible. It feels as though you
abandoned those sensations when it became inconvenient to write about
them, then put them in again when you wanted to explain why she was
wrapping her ribs.
--Where are the bodies? A whole village full of people has died, yet
your protagonist only sees two bodies. Near the end of the chapter,
she talks about burning others, but we never _see_ any of them. And I
wondered how tiny this village was, that she, alone and badly injured,
would be able to burn everyone in it in just a few hours. I suspect
that a village that small wouldn't have enough of a breeding pool to
survive, unless they have some way of regularly bringing in new people.
This is generally an intriguing piece of world-building, with a
compelling protagonist and a strong start _in media res_ with the
exciting/inciting action of a tornado that literally destroys your
protagonist's world and sets her on her journey. If there were less
of an info dump and more interaction with the other people who must
live in this village, I would read on.
--Nalo Hopkinson
Runners up, story: "Lex Talionis" by Rhonda S. Garcia
and "Yseult" by Ruth Nestvold
Editor's Choice, story: "The Sea Thy Mistress" by Elizabeth Bear
Even on a partial reading, this fragmentary piece by the
auspiciously named Ms. Bear stood out. Her near-future setting is
invigorated by infusions of mythology drawn mainly from Norse and
Christian sources. A potential drawback to this world-building
approach is that some readers may not be familiar with a particular
mythology, but Ms. Bear does a good job of avoiding that pitfall here
by giving her terms contextual grounding.
Two caveats in the author's comments section are worth addressing.
First, Ms. Bear advises "those who like action-oriented stories" that
they are apt to find her submission disappointing because it is
"oriented around relationships." Second, she warns of "a somewhat
experimental narrative style."
There doesn't need to be a fight scene on every page for a story to be
riveting and suspenseful. Even in scenes where there is no violent
action, or even much physical action at all, the thoughts and emotions
of Ms. Bear's characters, as well as the dynamic tensions of their
relationships, create an impression of feverish activity going on
below the surface and liable to erupt into plain view at any moment.
Look at the scene entitled "39 A.R./Spring Soltice," where Ethelred
meets Aefre. There is a sense of coiled menace throughout. The
language is terse and vivid, punctuated by ironic asides whose casual
brutality--sometimes amusing, sometimes shocking--speaks volumes about
these people and their world. Descriptions are equally telling.
Special attention is paid to marks of violent action: old burns that
still itch; a missing eye; facial scars; some kind of metallic facial
prosthesis. Even the Earth shows evidence of violent change, albeit
of an opposite nature: injuries miraculously healed rather than
inflicted. These and other important clues are introduced with
economy and without fanfare; often their significance is not
immediately apparent, which gives us the fun of putting the pieces
together ourselves if we can. Misdirection is skillfully (but
honestly) employed: the first ten lines, for example, ending with "He
was here to see about a girl," furnish details about Ethelred and his
mission, every one of which is perfectly true, that can lead readers
to draw a false conclusion.
Ms. Bear's second caveat, about style, is legitimate. But in what way
is her style experimental? And how does this style add to or detract
from the effective communication of her story?
The submissions (let's call them parts one and two) are structured in
sections of one or more scenes. The majority of these sections are
written in the third person and from the point of view of various
characters. Nothing experimental there. More unusual is the
interspersing of sections told in the first person among the
third-person sections. In these sections, the character Cathoair,
also known as Cahey, who was once human and is now an angel or
einherjar, speaks directly to his son, Cathmar, whose presence is
inferrable though he does not speak in turn. While somewhat jarring
at first, this technique can be an effective narrative device; the use
of first person provides a more intimate and subjective approach than
the third-person sections and can be set against them, both in tone
and in content, in interesting ways.
No, by "somewhat experimental style," Ms. Bear is probably referring
to the order in which the first- and third-person sections are
presented. Most traditional narratives reflect our usual perception
of time as moving in a predictable linear fashion. Ms. Bear wants to
shake things up a bit . Her third-person sections, while progressing
linearly (from 45 A.R. to 50 A.R.), do not seem to follow a
predictable sequential pattern. They are separated by varying
intervals of time. I suspect that the first section of part one (the
Ethelred section), which is set in 39 A.R./Spring Solstice, may be
misdated, as the first section of part two (the Aefre section), which
seems to follow it immediately in time, is dated 49 A.R./Summer. From
the content, it doesn't seem like Ethelred has been visiting for 10
years . . . but I could be wrong, because I was unable to decipher the
author's dating system, and I wasn't sure if time was measured as we
measure it; whether, that is, the time between 49 A.R. and 50 A.R.
corresponds to that between 2001 A.D. and 2002 A.D. In fact, some
characters do seem to experience time differently than others, and
some places, such as the home of Cahey and Cathmar, seem to exist in
unique "time zones." These are relatively minor concerns, easily
remedied. More significant is the confusion stemming from the fact
that the first-person sections are dated "Year Zero." The assumption
readers automatically make is that the A.R. dating system follows the
events of Year Zero. One problem with this assumption is that
Cathmar, Cahey's son, is ten years old in 45 A.R., yet, as already
noted, Cahey is talking to Cathmar in the Year Zero sections, and in
such a way as to strongly imply his physical presence. It's hard to
see how Cahey could be doing that 35 "years" prior to Cathmar's birth.
This is one area where Ms. Bear needs to take special care and think
about being more forthcoming. It's generally a bad sign when a reader
lays down your novel and picks up a calculator!
A few specific points:
--There are places where scenes are too compressed or condensed. I
think Ms. Bear should consider expanding these sections. Examples:
"I owe you an apology," she said. And then we had a stupid argument,
and I thought she was going to send me away...
(Show, don't tell.)
In the "49 A.R./Summer" section (part 2), from "She swept in and
kissed him once" to the end of the scene.
(The author goes to a lot of trouble to get Mardoll and Cathmar into
this basement, then brings the scene to a rushed and premature
conclusion. A missed opportunity. Later:)
Selene nodded. "Tea would be fine," she said, and so the afternoon
and the evening passed.
(It's all too clear that Selene makes her appearance now in order to
accompany Cathmar into town the next morning. The author could delay
her arrival until morning, or show us a little more of the afternoon
and evening.)
--In the 50 A.R./First Day of Spring section (part 2): "Because
Mardoll asked me where angels come from." This refers back to a
previous encounter between Cathmar and Mardoll, but the author doesn't
show us that encounter. It's an important question; hence, I think
readers deserve to see it.
--Some nice touches:
"The collar of her shirt gaped a little, and the bull saw something
like a run of tears sparkle against the white skin of her throat." An
important clue deftly placed.
"She kissed like a girl who had never been kissed before, which I
suppose she hadn't, except she kissed like the wildest, saddest,
wisest woman in the world." A description that tells us as much about
the narrator as the woman he is describing.
The dialogue about the cat between Aefre and Ethelred in 49
A.R./Summer, part 2, is sharp and well done.
This is a superior piece of work by a writer of enviable talents. I
look forward to reading more!
--Paul Witcover (author of WAKING BEAUTY)
| - - REVIEWER HONOR ROLL - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
The Reviewer Honor Roll area of the workshop recognizes members who
have given useful, insightful reviews. After all, that's what makes
the workshop go, so we want to give great reviewers a little
well-earned recognition! (Some months we also award a prize to a
special reviewer.) If you got a really useful review and would like to
add the reviewer to the Reviewer Honor Roll, just use our online
honor-roll nomination form--log in and link to it from the bottom of
the Reviewer Honor Roll page at
http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/honorroll.shtml. Your nomination
will appear on the first day of the next calendar month.
This month's Reviewer MVP is Dena Landon, who's top of the Top
Reviewer list right now and also placed first in last month's Crit
Marathon. We'll send Dena a signed copy of Karin Lowachee's WARCHILD.
Congratulations, Dena!
The Honor Roll will show all May nominations beginning June 1. Some
advance highlights from the May honor roll:
Reviewer: Greg Byrne
Submission: BLOOD OF RUSHMA, Ch. 9 by Brad Beaulieu
Submitted by: Brad Beaulieu
Nominator's Comments: Greg gives consistently insightful comments. I
get information on low-level changes that are useful, but Greg also
points out high-level items that can affect (for the better) all of my
writing. Thanks, Greg, for the time and effort!
Reviewer: Jon Paradise
Submission: THE FIFTY-THREE COLORS OF DRAGONS, Prologue and Ch.s 1-3
by Wade White
Submitted by: Wade White
Nominator's Comments: Jon's review was very thorough. He went through
line by line, pointing out both things he really enjoyed and things
that he felt needed work. He commented at the end of each major break
as to how he thought the story to that point was going, and made
summary remarks on general theme, plot, tone, etc. He pointed out some
gaps in logic and flow (even very small ones), but also highlighted
those aspects which he thought worked well. Jon's input was
encouraging as well as direct, and my writing will improve on account
of both of these aspects.
All nominations received in April can be still found at:
http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/honorroll.shtml
| - - PUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENTS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
Leah Bobet's poem "Stepsister" was picked up by Star*Line, and her
story "Spirits," a challenge piece, will be at _NFG_, a new quarterly
print magazine (http://nfg.ca/).
Audra Bruno's story "Unmade, a Mole on Tuesday" (a former challenge
piece, workshopped as "Desire") has been designated the editor's pick
for the summer issue of online magazine _Flashquake_, available June 1
(http://www.flashquake.com).
In April Wendy Delmater sold six poems (2 per week) to _Survivor Wit_,
a bi-weekly zine, and _Gateway SF_
(http://www.gateway-sf-magazine.com) is publishing her story "If the
Light" (workshopped here!).
Charles Coleman Finlay sold an Arthurian/Welsh folklore story, "Wild
Thing," to _The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction_.
Karen Kobylarz has sold two short stories recently and both are
available now: "A Perfect Game" to _Elysian Fiction_ and "Expecting
Miracles" to _Fables_ (http://www.fables.org/spring02/miracles.html).
Kelly Link, one of the workshop's Resident Editors and award-winning
author, won a 2002 Nebula for her novelette "Louise's Ghost," which
was published in her 2001 collection STRANGER THINGS HAPPEN.
Former member Bobbi McCutcheon's SF novel FATHER MARS, MOTHER EARTH is
available via RJBooks
(http://www.rjbooks.com/index.cgi?PageToView=catalog&Department=69223&Cartid=)
She says, "Through the valuable lessons I learned as a workshop
member, I gained an agent for my Science Fiction adventure...I learned
at the workshop what I consider to be the finishing touches on my
abilities as a writer and I want thank former sponsor Del Rey Books
all the hard-working people who maintain this site for people like me
who wish to persevere and become a success."
Darren Moore has won first place in the Eric Einersen Memorial Short
Story Contest for CONduit 12 (http://conduit.sfcon.org/) with his
story "The Duke's Road." He says, "Thank you all for your support!"
Mark Morehead has been accepted to the 2002 Clarion Science Fiction
and Fantasy Writers' Workshop. That makes two workshoppers this year!
Ruth Nestvold sold her short story "Looking Through Lace" to
_Asimov's_. She says, "Thanks to all who took a look at it while it
was up (in pieces) on the workshop." Ruth also sold her story "A
Serca Tale" to _NFG_, a new quarterly print magazine (http://nfg.ca/).
Sharon Partington placed her story "The Hunted" with _Aphelion
Webzine_ (http://www.aphelion-webzine.com) for publication in June.
She says, "I did workshop the story, and the comments and suggestions
I received through its various incarnations were invaluable!"
Chelsea Polk sold her story "Still Life, Dead Souls," the revised
version of the Editor's Choice runner up "The Egyptian Book of the
Dead," to Gothic.Net (http://www.gothic.net).
Jeremy Tolbert sold "Hallucinogenic Toreador" to _Alternate Realties_ (http://www.alternaterealitieszine.com). This was his first sale!
Mikal Trimm's short story "Neighbor, Neighbor" is in
online magazine Peridot Books now (http://www.peridotbooks.com/Fiction/Neighbor/neighbor.html).
| - - WORKSHOP STATISTICS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
Number of members as of 2/20: 392 paying, 173 trial
Number of submissions currently online: 645
Percent of submissions with 3 or more reviews: 64.8%
Percent of submissions with zero reviews: 3.4%
Number of submissions in April: 753
Number of reviews in April: 3539
Ratio of reviews/submissions in April: 4.7
Estimated average word count per review in April: 473
Number of submissions in May to date: 345
Number of reviews in May to date: 1619
Ratio of reviews/submissions in May to date: 4.69
Estimated average word count per review in May to date: 472
| - - FEEDBACK - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
SPECIAL REFLECTION FROM NOVELIST KARIN LOWACHEE
I can safely say that the publication of my novel WARCHILD can be
directly traced back to my involvement in the Online Writing Workshop.
In 1999 a friend of mine, also a writer, sent me a link with the
words, "Have you seen this?" I was involved in a loose-knit e-mail
writer's group but only corresponded with two or so of the members on
a regular basis. My friend Angela, who was in this group, forwarded
the OWW link (and I'm eternally grateful!). I checked it out, liked
what I saw, and submitted the first chapter of a fantasy novel, my
then-project. I had very little trepidation about getting critiques
from complete strangers. _Bring it on!_ I'd gone through three years
of university workshop classes and one Worldcon workshop with Jack
Dann and David Brin, and considered myself pretty "broken in" to the
process (I'd had all my fear kicked out of me and managed to stay
standing). I was curious to know what strangers would think and
figured this was the closest I'd get to having a "readership"...other
genre readers who didn't know me personally, just the work.
The responses to my first chapter were lukewarm to mildly
enthusiastic. I don't think I got more than five reviews. Gamely, I
submitted the next couple chapters. The review numbers dwindled. The
workshop was large and my story was small and admittedly choppy.
Coincidentally, I was becoming frustrated with the novel and with my
job at the time; my writing slacked. I didn't check in with the
workshop on a regular basis, though I tried to review people whose
reviews and writings I respected (in the hopes that they would look at
my work). All through this, a science fiction idea that had been
battering around in my brain since high school decided to rear its
head again. I tinkered with it on and off but couldn't get past five
or ten so-so pages. It all felt wrong.
Then a character that I'd previously relegated to supporting status in
the SF idea told me the beginning of his story--in second person. I'd
never written in second person (all the rulebooks say a Big No-No) but
the impulse just came and I pounded out what later evolved into the
first 40 pages of WARCHILD. At the time it was a 10-page blurt and I
posted it on the workshop without much hope. The second person
point-of-view was going to turn everybody off, it was probably
sloppily done too, and I wasn't even sure where this novel was
going--or if it would go. As I said, this character wasn't supposed to
be the star (but I suppose he was the most determined).
Since I didn't have many hopes for the excerpt I promptly forgot about
it for a couple months. Then, a week before going away on vacation, I
checked the workshop and discovered a slew of comments on my
chapter--most of them positive--as well as an Editor's Choice nod. I
was shocked. Oh, I thought. I guess I better continue to write it!
So many people said that they couldn't wait to see what happened to
Jos, and that propelled me to find out for myself. Being greedy (I
prefer "driven"), I wasn't satisfied with just one Editor's Choice
either. I made it a goal to submit a chapter every month, a
self-challenge to see if the rest of the narrative held up to the
first chapter. The main byproduct of this method was that I made and
met deadlines, which is the only way I finished the book (I need
deadlines. I love deadlines. Tattoo this to your forehead). Subsequent
chapters did get more nods from the editors, but that became icing on
the cake.
Many die-hard critiquers of the book throughout the months also became
die-hard friends who encouraged me to complete WARCHILD and eventually
submit it to Warner Aspect's First Novel Contest. I never would have
finished the novel or believed it was any good without their honest
comments and enthusiastic, unconditional support. So to everyone who
offered critiques back in the day, and to the Online Writing Workshop
for providing a place for writers to meet, learn, and improve their
writing--a tremendous thank you!
TIP: How to get reviews
Here's how I built up a base of reviewers: I began by submitting a
chapter, then I went out and reviewed two or three pieces per day. I
stuck with Prologues, beginning chapters and short stories. When I
received new crits or return crits, I immediately sent out thank-you
e-mails. Not only does this show people that you appreciate them, it
also makes them more likely to keep returning crits.
I've also found that if you start with someone's story in the
beginning and critique all the following chapters, they will do the
same for you. Another handy little tip: if you have submitted a
revision or an additional chapter and previous reviewers have said
they'd like to read more, send them a quick e-mail telling them you've
posted. Nine times out of ten they'll respond and review you--as long
as you keep returning the favor.
Currently, I submit about three pieces per month and receive an
average of six reviews per piece (as many as 11 on occasion). My
current review history is about 23 reviews; I figure I do an average
of five reviews per week.
--Submitted by Tamara Heinlein
TIPS APPRECIATED
Got a helpful tip for your fellow members? A trick or hint for
submitting or reviewing, for what to put in your author's comments,
for getting good reviews, or for formatting or titling your
submission? Or a writing tip? Share it with us and if we agree it's
useful we'll publish it in the next newsletter. Just send it to
support@sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com and we'll do the rest.
See you next month!
The Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction and Fantasy
http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com
support@sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com
| - - Copyright 2002 Online Writing Workshops, LLC - - - - - - - - -|
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