This is a very good comic, and it describes every author (or #artist) who is unsure of themself. Don't let this be you!
Complete stories (your vision) regardless of the merit you see in them.
Start a next one. Full stop. Then another.
Complete and send out more stories even if some editor (or commenter) doesn't buy or like them.
It's all practice, every single failure or not-good-enough. Practice makes you better, whatever they think, or you think. Keep practicing.
Take from criticism only whatever helps you identify or fix problems; reject being put in your place or ridiculed. It's practice. Your art is unique to you. Be truthful with yourself, though.
Keep starting and completing stories. Statistically, some will be good—and you will start to recognize the wheat in the chaff.
Their first stories weren't fabulous. Neither may be yours. The difference? They kept on starting, completing, sending (or posting), until they found success. Let that be you.
Please remember: #boostingIsSharing and boost to give others a moral boost.
Hey Patrons, both current and future! This is just to remind you that supporters at even the lowest monthly levels get full access to the catalog of professional-grade releases of fiction and any nonfiction worthy of publication—feature-length, short stories, and everything in between.
This will include audio works also as soon as I find a suitable volunteer or find a way to compensate a professional.
STUMBLING TOWARD ENLIGHTENMENT in Seoul: university friends now in their thirties find heartbreak and lesser forms of anomie in this eloquent, multivocal experimental novel rich with details of life in today’s South Korea. B PLUS
For no particular reason, I had The Rooster Bar by John Grisham on my TBR and started reading it this week. I don't normally go for "airport books," but this one is a ton of fun. Now I remember why I read over a dozen of Grisham's books in the 90s and early 2000s. It's been a while since I picked him up... almost a couple decades, but I'm glad I did again.
FTR, The Rooster Bar has nothing to do with chickens. 😉
If you haven't yet had a look, check us out now! The book is free as in speech, and free as in beer! And if you like what you see, please rate us, review us, and tell your friends! (or foes!)
#PennedPossibilities 323 — What's a piece of advice for writers that you listened to and are glad for?
An Australian author, Lucy Sussex, told us at Clarion West 1998 to be shameless in promoting ourselves. Being a shy person, networking and promotion has been a heavy lift, but I'm working on it and I know it's going to help. Mastodon: ☑️
#PennedPossibilities 322 — What piece of advice, as an author, did you once receive but hadn’t followed? Looking back on it now, you might wish that you had.
Advice: Don't only write novels. Write lots of shorter pieces.
When I started I saw that you could only make a living if you sold novels, so I wrote novels. That completely discounted the fabulous practice you get completing lots of smaller stories. Completing a novel takes lots of time and there's a mounting anxiety that in the end the plot will fail or no publisher will be interested. Yeah, true with short fiction, but the investment is far lower (or should be if you're doing it right). There used to be lots of magazines you could sell short fiction to... for pennies a word, but it was something, and it offered a chance to build a brand name and a following. Such notoriety could help you sell novels, too.
Now free for all to read... I'm a fan of the humourist author PG Wodehouse, and have occasionally visited places connected with his life and work. Here are four of them:
The sound design and graphical arrangement is minimal, the (often randomly chosen) texts are written greatly – they are highly poetic, beautiful, fey ...In „A row of chairs abandoned on the beach“, humans do consequently become coast, night, and sky – but the world is turned into a living, equitable, and vivid instance in return.
Lilith by Eric Rickstad has been in my mountainous tbr ever since I first heard about it. I’m nearing the end of Under the Dome, so when it came ready from the library, I jumped on it.
PS. The strawberries have nothing to do with anything other than they make for a lovely contrast & they are the latest haul from my garden. #books#photography#fiction
#WordWeavers 2405.19 — How did you settle on your MC’s appearance?
Historically, I wrote my characters such that I found them attractive. I don't do that anymore.
Sometimes I don't have control, except for hair styles and clothes, or the lack thereof. The story or character may have certain in-the-moment requirement, like when the MC needed to train in an almost all-male fight gym as a prizefighter (she'd later win a championship). Of course she had tailored pink and black gym wear made of technical fabric that outlined every curve—which proved interesting.
These days I do the best not to assign an appearance at all, instead keeping things vague and sticking to describing only what's absolutely necessary. My experiences with publishers is that'll they'll ignore your descriptions for cover art and promotion anyway. In any case, doing this allows the reader to imagine someone they would find attractive(†). The MC in the current WiP is described physically only as tall, shy, so beautiful that both sexes fall for her, and that she has "winter eyes," whatever that is. In the other story, the only thing I'm settled on is described by the devil-girl something like this:
"Take two finger length pieces of rusty rebar, sharpen one end, bend it ninety degree, and stick one above each temple, pointing backwards. Makes wearing hats problematic. Yeah. Gets messy when they try to grab you by the head in a fight, especially if it sticks in..."
She's also describes her very olive complexion; she's mentioned green eyes in a mirror and red hair everywhere. It could easily change in revision.
(†) A recent writer's prompt asked about my target audience. Can I say "imaginative?"
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 9 Nbr 18 — Have you written sections where the action occurs against the clock? How did you do it?
My current story segment in serialization takes place over a very short time period, after the last third of the previous story taking place between dusk and dawn. The other story I am working on is a three act story, each act taking place over very few hours.
Writing stories in compressed time isn't much different than writing stories that take place more episodically over longer periods of time. In both cases, I write about what is important for the character and how they deal with events. An example may help.
In the serialization (obviously spoilers if you know which story I'm referring to), the MC realizes that though the leader has left on a military adventure to handle a "guerrilla insurgency," she sees evidence that same foe may attack the capital city. In theory, she's politically second in command. In practice, she has no real power. How she spends that day scheming and conniving with only a title to get a single frigate on patrol drives the story and the clock. It starts with a PTSD episode where she realizes she may be responsible again for innumerable deaths without the power to prevent them, then her working every contact she knows, butting heads with the generals who discount her experience running a crime syndicate (briefly), convincing a discriminated against officer who wants to accept discharge to instead command a museum-piece frigate, getting into a bloody fight with the XO, avoiding what the reader will see as assassination attempts, and it just gets worse with her love interests (plural!) pulling at her heart.
All in 12 hours. Tick-tock! That's one day of three days of escalating existential threats. The fourth day's events take place over one hour, which is about the time it would take to read.
Liz just wants a happy birthday.
Is that too much to ask?
A beautiful antique bed: her birthday present to herself. The nice delivery men set it up in her bedroom, and then all Hell breaks loose. Literally.
When it turns out the bed's former owner isn't basking in the glow of a happy afterlife, Liz must face some nasty adversaries to help him. Why on earth would she risk her life and her sanity to help a ghost? Certainly not because she’s in love with him.
Jenny Erpenbeck opens #Spring 2024 with Sloughing Off One Skin, a haunting #ShortStory that explores truth and identity, translated by Michael Hofmann.