Working on It
All right! After much deliberation I’ve decided to post my stories. If I want to be published I’m certainly going to have to grow a tough exterior, and since I don’t have the special powers of casting stone skin and other protections, this is as good a sounding board as any, yes?
My only option was to create a fiction page, which unfortunately is static. It’s at the top of this home page nestled in beside the others, perhaps trying to blend in. Being static means that I can’t post to it, which then means that once I insert one story, the next one will just have to be added above it as an edit. Thus, I have no introduction to the page, and on thinking about that, I decided to just relax and let things appear as they are. I’m not going to write excuses like this story is ten years old, and so is this one, and this one is a bit shitty, and this one, well, I’m not sure if it works, and all that unnecessary crap that just makes me feel better and justifies everything in my mind. So I’ve told my quaking self-esteem to shut it and buck up and take this like a woman. My only requests are that you offer only constructive criticism (that is, don’t tell me my story is a pile of shit, just nicely tell me why) and that you be honest. Also, don’t tiptoe around me because you feel I’m fragile. I am, a little, but humouring me is just cruel. Also, the people who frequent this blog now, I really respect your opinions, and I would very much appreciate them if you feel so inclined. I’m hoping with this venture to grow in my writing, which, as I mention in my about page, was the reason I started this blog in the first place. It occurred to me today that while I haven’t necessarily been writing fiction, it’s not true that I haven’t been writing at all. I write here a lot and quite a lot. And, as Martha Stewart says, that’s a good thing.
Because there won’t be a comment area for each story, just comment in the one box there at the very bottom of the page.
I feel on the verge of something big. Thank you all for pushing me to the edge.
Filed under: Uncategorized | 13 Comments
I have to say, I really hate how stories are formatted here. No matter what I do, they end up with big spaces and no indentations and all that crap. I think it takes away from the reading. Damn it.
It does suck when you work on formatting to get it just right and then it doesn’t come out the way you wanted. It’ll be fine, though.
When I was working on my MFA, we had a guy walk into class with a roll of paper towels. Turns out, he had written a very long short story on that roll of paper towels. I wanted him to call it “Scroll 2.0″ but he wouldn’t hear of it.
Neither here nor there, just another fun formatting fact.
Ahahaha! Gotta love those “arteest” types. Though I’ve been known to write ideas on Kleenex before. (Scroll 2.0 would have been awesome! It also sounds like a good website title, maybe a creative writing one? Do you publish your fiction anywhere?)
If it can be written on, I’m sure I have written a note on it at some point.
I don’t have anything online anymore. I used to until I was flipping through a literary journal and found one of my stories. That I hadn’t submitted. I guessed it was ripped off of my writing site, so I took it down. Getting it back up and running is something on my to do list. I just haven’t gotten a good kick in the pants to actually get it going.
This is me KICKING YOU!!
Do it.
PS. How ignorant someone would do that!! And a literary journal!! I suppose there’s a compliment in there, somewhere, though!
Okay, it’s at the top of my list for tomorrow. Well, near it. Gotta do the money writing first.
The guy did leave a nice comment on how great the story was. His momma raised him right.
Well, sort of right. Seems she did a half-ass job. Didn’t she teach him never to steal?
Hi Steph,
The only thing I would add is:
Don’t read the comments until after you post yours!
That way your opinion will not be influenced consciously or not by someone else’s.
Ellen: good point!
Steph, you wouldn’t want stone skin, anyway. I read a book a lot of years back that made something of an impression on me. What I got from it was, “Good writing is easy, all you have to do is open a vein.” That’s probably not an exact quote. “Open a Vein” might even be the title of the book, but the point is you’ve got to absorb and use emotion to get good writing. Besides that, stone skin would probably weigh more than it’s worth.
Kleenex, napkins, envelopes, receipts, and candy wrappers — a treasure trove of blurred, but remarkable literature resides in the bottoms of purses, pockets, and landfills.
April: I agree! You do have to absorb and use emotion and empathy and observation…but by developing stone skin I mean in light of being criticized! I think one does have to be thick-skinned for that!
I love your story about the ring. Keep writing. Keep on keeping on.
Muffy: Thank you!!