Regarding Writing Posts
31/1/05 20:25![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eredien[I am reposting this because many peoples' holiday goings-on were a bit crazy and I don't know how many of you saw it once it got buried under descriptions of "What I Did On My Vacation." And you really do have to put your name here on the list, because I am not telepathic and do have a bit of a swiss-cheese memory (things fall through the holes and sit for a while).]
I am in the process of trying to set up a friends group wherein anyone in the group would be able to read writings I post to that particular group.
Why is this a problem? I do not know which of you would like to be included or excluded from this list, since many of the stories, poems, and other works posted on it might at some point contain depictions of violence, sex, and bad puns.
I might also ask people on the writing friends group if they would mind critiquing a story before I sent it out to a magazine or market, and would have somewhere relatively accessible, yet not public, where I could post the story and possibly get feedback from people whose judgment on such things I trust.
I would still make public poetry and fiction posts from time to time, when I felt that the subject matter was not too intense or if I had no intention of publishing the work at that time, so those of you who might not want to be on the list won't miss out.
So, the question I put to the people on my friends list is threefold:
1.) Could you read and get something out of stories or poetry dealing with sometimes serious subject matter without having the subject matter freak you out?
2.) Could you occasionally critique something and/or have me question you in-depth about your reactions to a piece, and why?
3.) Do you have a reader's ear for good writing, an ability to dissect and explain a story's good and bad points without trying to make me feel better about my writing, and a thick skin?
If you answered "no" to questions one and two or any of the points of question three, thanks for reading this post, but you probably wouldn't want to be on the list anyway.
If you answered yes to all three questions and all the points of question three, and would genuinely like to be on the list (I'm not trying to coerce anyone--I want people who want to read my stuff and critique it!) please
How to get on the writing/poetry filter group [not work-safe]:
Within a month, post a note to the effect of "I want to be on the writing/poetry filter group" as a reply to this post.
Why do you need a thick skin?
Not because I'm particularly bilious to those who try to critique my writing--because I don't want you to get upset.
-I don't want you to get upset if I add you to the list and you read something you don't like.
-I don't want you to get upset if I don't add you to the list. If I don't feel comfortable adding you, I won't add you, and I'm sorry if that hurts your feelings, but I hope we're all mature people here and can deal with that.
-I don't want you to get upset if I email you six months in and say, "Hi. I've noticed you've never ever posted any comments to my stories; are you getting anything out of them?"
- I don't want you to be upset if I decide to take you off the list.
- You cannot take a question like, "What you said was unclear; restate please?" as a personal attack.
Reasons why I would take people off the list or simply not add them in the first place:
- I don't think you have a good ear for what makes good writing. If your journal is riddled with spelling errors, if you can't use plurals, if you TYPE LIKE THIS all the time and use five hundred exclamation points and hundreds of little internet acronyms, I'm sorry, but I probably won't add you. If you don't care enough to edit your own journal to make it readable for a wider audience, how can you expect to tell me how to make my work readable for a wider audience? Also, I do not want to have to wade through comments like "OMG I **LOVED** your characters Guesualdo & Puccini are the OTP + will life forevr!" when what I am really looking for is comments like, "in paragraph three I think you forgot a comma, and Puccini did not come from Germany, as you said in sentence two of that same paragraph. Please proofread more carefully!" I may really like you as a person, you may be sparklingly intelligent. I still might not add you. Note: I professionally edited a newspaper for six months. Grammar really does give order to prose. I'm not just some grammarian gone amok. (Also, apologies to anyone who likes opera, Guesualdo, or music in general. I swear that was the first thing that came to mind).
- If I see by your comments that you are being freaked out by the subject matter rather than the writing. This isn't to say that you can't or shouldn't comment on the subject matter in your critiques. If you really think that, for example, "Soylent Green" is an offensive name for a fast-food restaurant, please tell me. But if every comment ends up being a "Soylent Green," maybe you oughtn't to be on the list.
- If I don't know you well enough to trust that you won't go spreading my writing around on the internet if I mean to publish it. I really don't think this would come up, given that I try not to have people like that on my regular friends list on the first place. I hope it wouldn't. (If I'm only a friendly acquaintance and you want to be on the filter, the best way to do it is to email me, and we'll talk for a few months and get to know each other better, which is always my ultimate goal for a friendship anyway.) Needless to say, if the writing left the journal, you'd be off the list.
- If your comments show that you can know what makes a good story, but you can't get that across in a clear fashion: "I really liked paragraph two; it was really pretty. Good imagery and use of metaphor." ("Good use of metaphor" sounds kind of useful, but isn't. What was good about the metaphor? What was boring, and what stunk? What did the image do to the grammar, your heart, soul, brain, the rhyme scheme? How does the line "orgasm and sobbing are the same shake" hit you, where, and why? Word order? Word choice? The fact that the sentence after it is "she wanted both but could not permit herself either"?
- If that last bit freaked you out, you should probably not sign up for the filter.
- If your comments show that you know what makes a good story, and you can get that across in a clear fashion, but you want to make me feel better instead of making my writing better. I don't need "Wow, that was a great use of alliteration!" I need, "the alliteration here was really effective because you didn't use it anywhere else throughout the whole piece, and I know you've been trying to train yourself away from using it all the time, so it made a studied impact here instead of being some kind of tired rhetorical trick."
- If you never comment on anything. I can't even tell if you're reading the posts if you don't critique or comment on them, so why keep you on the filter? I revamp my friends list about every five months (that's when I remember to do it). If I haven't seen a comment from you since the last time I revamped my list or the last time I posted to the filter (whichever comes first), I'll probably take you off. Unless you're vacationing in Antarctica.
Critiquing:
- Don't feel like you have to critique every story. Don't feel like you can't critique a story because you don't know about the subject matter, or because you do know about it and one fact I didn't know will neatly unravel the entire plot.
- Be as long or as short as you need to be to say what you must, but be concise.
- Please split up critiques into two parts: editing and commentary. Editing--for things like misspellings, missed punctuation, places where the grammar is off or the nouns and verbs are at odds with each other (in other words, stuff I should really have caught). Commentary: everything else, including stylistic matters.
- Like I said, it is important to critique once in a while so I can tell you're reading the stuff.
This seems like...work.
- I am asking something from you.
What do I get out of it?
- I will try my best to make each story better than the last for you. I am asking this because I want to entertain with my words as my job, as my life. I find it more worth my while than anything to write ("Oh, authors are very simple creatures, really. When the words are flowing everything else can go hang." - Neil Gaiman) but I want you to find my stuff worthy of a dirty rug--I want you to forget where you are; I want you to forget to eat; I want the dog to piss on the floor because you're too busy turning pages to walk him even though you know he had to go.
Why are you doing this now? Your old system of posting this kind of gory, experimental, or kind of personal poetry and fiction as friends-only worked ok.
- A while back, a few friends of mine noted they would like to read my friends-only writings, and felt left out. I did not want to drag those friends through the parental rants and personal business of my friends-only list to find the occasional haiku. I also wanted them to be able to read all of my writing. This seems like a solution which will work.
- I didn't want to just up and add only people I already knew wanted to be on the filter: surrounding yourself with people who like what you do already is not a good way to improve--and maybe some of you think my writing sucks and would have begged me to take you off.
- I also wanted to catch people who might not like my writing very much now but see something in it which they might enjoy. I wanted to invite them to push me to do more.
What if I want off the list, or go on vacation in Antarctica and don't want to be removed?
- You email me, saying, either, "Frolicking among the penguins until the Ides of March; don't take me off!" or "Please take me off."
- If you want me to take you off, you may provide a reason if you wish--eg: "There was more Soylent than I thought--can't handle it anymore" or "I have no time to comment." If you don't, that's ok too.
- I will take you off the filter at the next filter-cleaning time, no questions asked.
Thank you for reading.
You have a month to decide; after that friends groups will go into effect and anyone who isn't on it can petition me via email. You can read this post again by going into my memories section and clicking on the "Writing-Critique Group" section. Thank you.
NB, 8/31/05: I am also adding this to the newly created "My LJ Policies" section.
I am in the process of trying to set up a friends group wherein anyone in the group would be able to read writings I post to that particular group.
Why is this a problem? I do not know which of you would like to be included or excluded from this list, since many of the stories, poems, and other works posted on it might at some point contain depictions of violence, sex, and bad puns.
I might also ask people on the writing friends group if they would mind critiquing a story before I sent it out to a magazine or market, and would have somewhere relatively accessible, yet not public, where I could post the story and possibly get feedback from people whose judgment on such things I trust.
I would still make public poetry and fiction posts from time to time, when I felt that the subject matter was not too intense or if I had no intention of publishing the work at that time, so those of you who might not want to be on the list won't miss out.
So, the question I put to the people on my friends list is threefold:
1.) Could you read and get something out of stories or poetry dealing with sometimes serious subject matter without having the subject matter freak you out?
2.) Could you occasionally critique something and/or have me question you in-depth about your reactions to a piece, and why?
3.) Do you have a reader's ear for good writing, an ability to dissect and explain a story's good and bad points without trying to make me feel better about my writing, and a thick skin?
If you answered "no" to questions one and two or any of the points of question three, thanks for reading this post, but you probably wouldn't want to be on the list anyway.
If you answered yes to all three questions and all the points of question three, and would genuinely like to be on the list (I'm not trying to coerce anyone--I want people who want to read my stuff and critique it!) please
How to get on the writing/poetry filter group [not work-safe]:
Within a month, post a note to the effect of "I want to be on the writing/poetry filter group" as a reply to this post.
Why do you need a thick skin?
Not because I'm particularly bilious to those who try to critique my writing--because I don't want you to get upset.
-I don't want you to get upset if I add you to the list and you read something you don't like.
-I don't want you to get upset if I don't add you to the list. If I don't feel comfortable adding you, I won't add you, and I'm sorry if that hurts your feelings, but I hope we're all mature people here and can deal with that.
-I don't want you to get upset if I email you six months in and say, "Hi. I've noticed you've never ever posted any comments to my stories; are you getting anything out of them?"
- I don't want you to be upset if I decide to take you off the list.
- You cannot take a question like, "What you said was unclear; restate please?" as a personal attack.
Reasons why I would take people off the list or simply not add them in the first place:
- I don't think you have a good ear for what makes good writing. If your journal is riddled with spelling errors, if you can't use plurals, if you TYPE LIKE THIS all the time and use five hundred exclamation points and hundreds of little internet acronyms, I'm sorry, but I probably won't add you. If you don't care enough to edit your own journal to make it readable for a wider audience, how can you expect to tell me how to make my work readable for a wider audience? Also, I do not want to have to wade through comments like "OMG I **LOVED** your characters Guesualdo & Puccini are the OTP + will life forevr!" when what I am really looking for is comments like, "in paragraph three I think you forgot a comma, and Puccini did not come from Germany, as you said in sentence two of that same paragraph. Please proofread more carefully!" I may really like you as a person, you may be sparklingly intelligent. I still might not add you. Note: I professionally edited a newspaper for six months. Grammar really does give order to prose. I'm not just some grammarian gone amok. (Also, apologies to anyone who likes opera, Guesualdo, or music in general. I swear that was the first thing that came to mind).
- If I see by your comments that you are being freaked out by the subject matter rather than the writing. This isn't to say that you can't or shouldn't comment on the subject matter in your critiques. If you really think that, for example, "Soylent Green" is an offensive name for a fast-food restaurant, please tell me. But if every comment ends up being a "Soylent Green," maybe you oughtn't to be on the list.
- If I don't know you well enough to trust that you won't go spreading my writing around on the internet if I mean to publish it. I really don't think this would come up, given that I try not to have people like that on my regular friends list on the first place. I hope it wouldn't. (If I'm only a friendly acquaintance and you want to be on the filter, the best way to do it is to email me, and we'll talk for a few months and get to know each other better, which is always my ultimate goal for a friendship anyway.) Needless to say, if the writing left the journal, you'd be off the list.
- If your comments show that you can know what makes a good story, but you can't get that across in a clear fashion: "I really liked paragraph two; it was really pretty. Good imagery and use of metaphor." ("Good use of metaphor" sounds kind of useful, but isn't. What was good about the metaphor? What was boring, and what stunk? What did the image do to the grammar, your heart, soul, brain, the rhyme scheme? How does the line "orgasm and sobbing are the same shake" hit you, where, and why? Word order? Word choice? The fact that the sentence after it is "she wanted both but could not permit herself either"?
- If that last bit freaked you out, you should probably not sign up for the filter.
- If your comments show that you know what makes a good story, and you can get that across in a clear fashion, but you want to make me feel better instead of making my writing better. I don't need "Wow, that was a great use of alliteration!" I need, "the alliteration here was really effective because you didn't use it anywhere else throughout the whole piece, and I know you've been trying to train yourself away from using it all the time, so it made a studied impact here instead of being some kind of tired rhetorical trick."
- If you never comment on anything. I can't even tell if you're reading the posts if you don't critique or comment on them, so why keep you on the filter? I revamp my friends list about every five months (that's when I remember to do it). If I haven't seen a comment from you since the last time I revamped my list or the last time I posted to the filter (whichever comes first), I'll probably take you off. Unless you're vacationing in Antarctica.
Critiquing:
- Don't feel like you have to critique every story. Don't feel like you can't critique a story because you don't know about the subject matter, or because you do know about it and one fact I didn't know will neatly unravel the entire plot.
- Be as long or as short as you need to be to say what you must, but be concise.
- Please split up critiques into two parts: editing and commentary. Editing--for things like misspellings, missed punctuation, places where the grammar is off or the nouns and verbs are at odds with each other (in other words, stuff I should really have caught). Commentary: everything else, including stylistic matters.
- Like I said, it is important to critique once in a while so I can tell you're reading the stuff.
This seems like...work.
- I am asking something from you.
What do I get out of it?
- I will try my best to make each story better than the last for you. I am asking this because I want to entertain with my words as my job, as my life. I find it more worth my while than anything to write ("Oh, authors are very simple creatures, really. When the words are flowing everything else can go hang." - Neil Gaiman) but I want you to find my stuff worthy of a dirty rug--I want you to forget where you are; I want you to forget to eat; I want the dog to piss on the floor because you're too busy turning pages to walk him even though you know he had to go.
Why are you doing this now? Your old system of posting this kind of gory, experimental, or kind of personal poetry and fiction as friends-only worked ok.
- A while back, a few friends of mine noted they would like to read my friends-only writings, and felt left out. I did not want to drag those friends through the parental rants and personal business of my friends-only list to find the occasional haiku. I also wanted them to be able to read all of my writing. This seems like a solution which will work.
- I didn't want to just up and add only people I already knew wanted to be on the filter: surrounding yourself with people who like what you do already is not a good way to improve--and maybe some of you think my writing sucks and would have begged me to take you off.
- I also wanted to catch people who might not like my writing very much now but see something in it which they might enjoy. I wanted to invite them to push me to do more.
What if I want off the list, or go on vacation in Antarctica and don't want to be removed?
- You email me, saying, either, "Frolicking among the penguins until the Ides of March; don't take me off!" or "Please take me off."
- If you want me to take you off, you may provide a reason if you wish--eg: "There was more Soylent than I thought--can't handle it anymore" or "I have no time to comment." If you don't, that's ok too.
- I will take you off the filter at the next filter-cleaning time, no questions asked.
Thank you for reading.
You have a month to decide; after that friends groups will go into effect and anyone who isn't on it can petition me via email. You can read this post again by going into my memories section and clicking on the "Writing-Critique Group" section. Thank you.
NB, 8/31/05: I am also adding this to the newly created "My LJ Policies" section.
