So the first short I've fed into the Submission Machine has now garnered two "Near Miss" rejections.  On one hand it sucks, but on the other hand, only about 6% of Clarke's World submissions get the "Near Miss" letter.  So at least I know I'm on the right track.  What I'd truly love to know is if there was a technical issue, not quite the content they were looking for, or  if there were simply too many other stories in the batch that struck chord with the editorial staff. 

Still, it's feedback of sorts, which is better than none.   

Something to consider--your piece might've simply been too long for the space they had available.  I've seen the suggestion that to get published in a magazine--write shorter.  Because if they have only so much space, and the editor has to choose between a longer piece by a well-known author or by an unknown, they're going to go for the well-known author.

OK, I've started writing original fiction, when I hit a big snag. I'm writing in the first person, and I'm trying to figure out how exactly to work a physical description of my narrator in without it seeming contrived. I tried finding out where Harry is first physically in Storm Front to get ideas, but I can't find it. Does anyone have any ideas?

Harry's first description is in the beginning of chapter 2--it's done in contrast with Murphy--height, hair and eye coloring.  It's done the same in several of the other books--Harry describing himself in comparison to one character or another, most often-that I can remember-with either Thomas or Murphy. In other places, he just describes himself.

Description by comparing to a main secondary character is pretty common, with what I can think of off the top of my head.  Another way is how it's done in the Toby Daye books--and I might be a bit off with this, going by memory--Toby describes herself in how she doesn't look human and what she does with glamour to make herself look human.  And I'm pretty sure there are some books where the character just flat out describes what they look like--I think the Anita Blake books do that, but I haven't read them in years so can't be certain.

Info about Texas in general really won't help too much with the Houston area, other than Texas history sort of info, because there are varied regions.  There's a reason one of the travel/visitor commercials had the slogan something like "Texas, it's a whole other country."
I grew up in Texas, and I wouldn't even try to answer any of the questions because I grew up in West Texas--my hometown is a 6 hour drive to get to Houston.  And West Texas goes a bit more twangy with accents and speech, which I don't think you get so much of in south/southeast Texas--I believe you get a bit more of a Southern drawl there.  Maybe.

Is there any worse feedback to get? In my creative writing class today, my two peer reviewers had little of note to say about my story, other than "It's good," "I like it," "It's nice," etc. I managed to squeeze a few more helpful bits out of them, but in the end I came to the conclusion either my story is absolutely goshdarn perfect, or they're just being...nice. Maybe it's just because I had the misfortune to go first.

How can you get good, useful feedback from people?

There is worse criticism--"This is really good! I'd like to read more!" I got that a lot in my college workshops. Course, I also had one note "What's a brazier? Is that like a brassiere?" My experience is that it comes from a lack of experience with critiques, or not wanting to be offensive or mean.  And sometimes it's that they don't understand what you're writing--e.g. they write mainstream/literary, and you write fantasy/sci-fi. Also, nonfiction, poetry, and fiction all in the same class?  Unless that was the assignment, and everyone was doing that, that's not really the best thing--they don't get critiqued quite the same way, at least for me they don't. 

For the most part, I ignored the critiques I got in my workshop classes--they were mostly useless, except for my poetry professor and my nonfiction professor.  Though those classes are why I tend to be so extremely picky with who I do chose to beta/critique for me. I go for people that will understand the genre, so I don't have to explain every little thing, and that know how to pick out what does/doesn't work in a story. And I look for people who are good at different things--I've got one beta who's good with grammar and medical stuff, one who's good with grammar and little details and pacing, and one who's good with big picture plot and storyline. And they're all good at picking out what does/doesn't work for character.

Also--read through this link--Communicating Criticism--it gives some pretty good advice on how to keep the criticism helpful instead of harsh, or sounding like you're trying to tell somebody how to write.

I do it because it seems to be more interesting to tell that bit of the story from an otherwise unexplored angle. In the case of the protag's mother, it felt more visceral to see her son in pain through her eyes than to stick with the protag's POV. She doesn't have a major subplot dedicated to her POV, but I just thought the particular scene worked better when seen through her eyes.

Going by this, sounds like it's possibly the right choice for the scene.  Yeah, it's not done often, but in part that's because most people haven't seen it done often.  I can't say off the top of my head where I've seen it done, if I've even read any books like that, but in one episode of Writing Excuses, Brandon Sanderson talks about this sort of thing.  In one of the Mistborn books, he switched from main character POV into a minor one-off POV.  The episode is hazy, so I don't remember exactly why he did it, but in part it was to give a different perspective on something happening, and to also heighten the tension a bit, I believe. 

Finally got everything typed up, including revisions to the first chapter. 87,400. I'mma go play mindless games for the rest of the day.

Couple thousand words tonight, and a thousand or so yesterday. 

What seems to work best for me is the David Drake approach:  Plan on writing 500 words a day, barring illness or unexpected houseguests and the like, anyway.  Drake Lite I guess?

Both times, once I sat down, I realized I'd blown way past my quota and had fun doing it.

Another thing I've decided works for me is not to force myself to write the story chronologically.  Today I had a particular scene just come to life and do a song and dance number in my melon while I was doing my Cubicle Drone In Sub-section Whisky Tango Foxtrot.  It was a scene that was a couple chapters down the road, but when I got home I figured I'd get it while it was hot because the way my brain works, the intervening scenes would ripen and demand attention in their own good time.  Worked out pretty good.

This is pretty much what I'm doing.  I set myself a 500 word/day goal--or Rob did, I'd actually planned on 250 and upping once that was consistent--and for the first few months, it was a bit of a struggle to hit each day, but I always made up on the weekends.  Now I'm hitting my goal, and often going a little over-usually depends on whether my only writing time is the half hour at work, or if I find time before dinner.  And I've been doing so well at it that I've changed my deadline to finish this draft from October(my birthday) to August(my anniversary). But I'm actually hopeful that I'll finish sooner, since I'm taking off most of next week, and I have very few plans.

And I've done the same, skipping around sometimes.  I mostly tend to write chronologically, but when I got stuck near the end of last year, I skipped to random scenes that didn't quite have a place in the timeline, but would be there eventually, and they helped me get a grasp on some of the backstory elements that had been eluding me. Quite a few of those scenes are nothing like they started, now, but I expect that.

My WiP's sitting at 73.7k right now, and I'm expecting to be over 75 by the end of the day. There's a possibility, though pretty slim, that I'll go over 80. Hoping, but not counting on it. Partly cause I'm not as certain where this'll be ending now. Or I've already written the ending, and what I'm writing now will have to be moved to earlier in the story.  Will see.

Right now, words.

Thanks MClark


I wouldn't have recognized the S from Farscape, I've only seen one episode. And I don't recall ever seeing the sonic screwdriver up close like that. Oh well.

But I believe the Enterprise is the Original one. That is a standard drawing of it.

The sonic screwdriver for the i has the Stargate as the dot.