As some of you may know, I recently won the Skip Johnson Award for Best Beta in the Second Annual Awesome Awards, over at FF.net. Winning that award made me pretty happy. In many ways, it was a vindication of my increasinly held belief that what little talent I have in the creative world, belongs behind the camera, so to speak, and not in front of it. Being a beta, being an editer, a sounding board, seems to be where my strength lies. This is both true in the fanfic world as well as the real world, where for the last year or so, my focus has been on getting a job in the publishing world (no easy task, especially when you live on the West Coast), instead of outright becoming a published writer.So what is the point of all this? Let me tell you: I've decided to try and play to my strengths. To that end, and in order to encourage more interaction on this blog, I want to try an experiment.
I want to develop a kind of writer's worshop, where people can ask me (and if they are amenable, the other contributors to this blog) questions, I can give writing advice, I can help develop plot (ask Frea, I'm a decent sounding board for that kind of thing), I can do just about anything you might want to talk about in regard to writing.
I'm also thinking of doing a kind of weekly prompt, where, if enough people are interested, I can provide a prompt and people will write on that prompt, and then as a group, we can discuss each entry and see what they did right, what they did wrong, and how they can improve things.
Basically, I'd like this blog (or at least this corner of it) to become a friendly and educational place for those of you who are interested in writing. I'm no expert by any means, but I'm a good listener, I'll tell you how it is, and I'm willing to learn more if you are. If you think this is something you would be interested in learning more about, feel free to e-mail me, or even better, leave a comment here expressing your opinion. Maybe you have a different idea that you'd like to see explored. Maybe you want to tell me I suck (hey, it's a free country). Whatever it is, let's hear it.
That would be nice. Sounds like a great forum to get feedback on actual writing style.
ReplyDeleteWhen is it a good idea to rewrite a chapter.
ReplyDeleteGreat question, Dennis. And I intend to answer it. Frea suggested I write a "column" about it, and so look for that in a few days.
ReplyDeleteI'll even use a section of Fates as an example of when it's a good idea to re-write a chapter.
Hah! Or you could post a link to my FFnet profile and say "Hey, if anything you write looks like this, rewrite it. Or better yet, take two days off from writing, and then quit." Heh.
ReplyDeleteSo, mxpw, I think your workshop thing is cool and I hope it comes together.
ReplyDeleteBut what would really help me is something a bit more real-time.
Often, I'm left trying to recall a specific turn-of-phrase or pop reference that I can't quite get enough of to bang into Google. Or I'm left repeatedly exchanging "incongruous" with "out of place" in my text because I can't decide whether one's too inaccessible or the other's too verbose.
It would be very nice to have a chat hot-line of sorts for quick sanity checks on stuff like that, or maybe to get small jump starts for writer's block. You know, just to bounce stuff off of people.
I've even found that often just the act of explaining something to someone else leads you to your own answers, oddly enough.
Anyway, just a suggestion. Carry on. :)