The Cantina Staring Back At You From The Abyss

paddismac said:

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is more to discourage folks from posting unedited drivel. Critters in SYW are there to help us improve our stories, and they can't do that if they have to wade through a mess of grammatical and spelling errors that the writer should have cleaned up before they posted.


If you're confident the excerpt you'd like to post is as clean as you can make it, and is as representative of the vision you have for your story as you can currently make it, go for it! It's LOADS of fun! not

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The goat ain't wrong. Except the part about it not being fun. It's fun like a five-alarm taco: It might hurt at first, but you'll be back for more (hopefully)

Thirding the goat. You don't need the whole thing done, it just means critters like work that's been cleaned to the best of your ability. Makes our job easier and gets you better crits.

shortstorymachinist said:

The goat ain't wrong. Except the part about it not being fun. It's fun like a five-alarm taco: It might hurt at first, but you'll be back for more (hopefully)

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Oh, but the after-effects!!!

ktdude said:

Hi everyone! Some awesome good news in here over the last couple of days, makes me feel excited to think that it might one day be me. Not sure where the optimism has come from, I was in proper a proper self-doubt fug last week feeling crappy about everything but I've had a couple of decent bursts of writing for my first draft and am on the verge of submitting something in SYW - debating though, I read through all the rules, it says not to submit a first draft - so - I'm taking it that doesn't mean I have to finish my ENTIRE first draft just to submit the first 2,000 words? Just that said 2,000 words needs to be a little more polished than the rest of the pile?

Am I on the right lines here? I just want to get a feel for anything obvious that I'm doing wrong, noob mistakes that I'm making repeatedly, and generally whether my opening is intriguing at all as I've already tweaked it quite a bit. Thoughts? Sorry that turned into a bit of a rambling post...

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It's means proofread before you post. And, unless you're asking for specific feedback on something you are wanting to change (i.e. "I've been writing this in close third but I'm thinking omni might work better, thoughts?") don't post stuff that you already know you are going to add to/revise bits out of/etc. (Obviously, things change during revisions, but it's poor form to post something that you know is not as finished as you can currently make it. And that refers only to the section you post, not the whole project.)

Some folks will be willing to help you with basic sentence level/grammar stuff if that's what needs help, but - if that turns out to be the case - most folks will not comment much on the story because they'll figure you're going to have to rewrite it anyway to address the craft issues. Thus the caution not to post first drafts. (It's been years since I've posted not-first drafts because I'm usually pretty clean with all the basic grammar, spelling, sentence structure stuff. But there are the occasional "Ooh, this looks like fun. Here's a thing I wrote 30 minutes ago" posts from newer folks that are barely readable.)

ION. *waves*

Things have been kind of trash around here so I've not been stopping by much. (Though I do read through the Cantina thread once a week or so.) But on the writing side of things, things are going pretty well. Nearly finished with a book for one publisher. Lining up doing a shared world novel for another one. Working on a novella for Tor.com and another press (so, two books, not one). Planning to sub a novel to Fireside in a couple of weeks. And contemplating what to sub to Twelfth Planet Press in October.

*HUGS* to those who need them. Congrats to those who are celebrating.

Aggy, retreats into the warm depths of the smibble pile

Morning, Cantina. Yeeeerg, my sinuses are very unhappy today. I think it's a combo of allergies and the oppressive heat and humidity. I have no desire to take a 12hr decongestant this late in the morning, though, so it will have to be Tylenol, if anything. Anyway, I have a book review I need to finish and then I need to get busy with the Camp Nano wordage as I've been in a good place with that lately, so off I go.


ETA: I agree with what the others were saying about SYW. I don't go there much, but it's nice as a critter to actually be able to READ the excerpt being posted before having to crit it.

Also, not saying you would do this, but I have, on two occasions gotten a PM from random posters I barely remember interacting with elsewhere on the board saying something along the lines of "you seem to know what you're talking about, so would you mind coming and looking at this thing I posted in SYW?" Well, I did go and look at the things and provide what feedback I could, just out of the kindness of my heart, but...I also kind of didn't appreciate being contacted out of the blue to do something I had no previous intention of doing and don't feel that qualified to do in the first place?

I mean, I'm flattered that whatever I said in response to those two people's posts elsewhere on the boards was apparently helpful to them and made them think I'm so smart and qualified, but I've literally only been writing for 4 years, am not published, and can count on one hand the number of people who have read and critiqued any finished works of mine, so I'm not actually as qualified as I apparently seem to be and personally feel that it's poor form to PM someone you've barely interacted with and solicit a crit when a crit hasn't been offered.

Like, it's one thing to say here in the Cantina "Hey, I posted something in SYW and would appreciate as many eyes on it as possible if any of you have a moment." That puts no pressure on any one person and it's just a general request for those who have time and interest. PMing an individual directly on the other hand...Yeah.

ktdude - As paddismac said, you just want to be sure your excerpt is well polished (fix what grammar and spelling errors you can, etc.) before posting, to allow critters to focus on the story and content and flow and such... like how you'd groom your dog before taking it to the dog show, so people could focus on the conformation and performance of the dog without being distracted by ratty hair and unclipped nails.

Tuesday morning, and about to head out to the first day camp silk screen run of the year (second is next week.) Usually get out of there by noon, which is good because it's supposed to be a hot day and the screen doesn't like hot days (ink drying in the screen is Not Good.)

Thanks everyone for answering my question - it's much appreciated and duly noted. I wouldn't dream of posting something with bad grammar/spelling but there may still be rookie errors (I'm concerned about possible POV issues purely because I see them being picked up a lot where I wouldn't even have noticed!) so I guess it may just be a case of suck it and see - I'm building up the courage, we'll see if I ever get to it. I know it will be really useful.

Thank you all you guys are so helpful!

Tuesday evening, and just finished the post-dinner root beer float (and, with it, my root beer float ice cream - need to restock tomorrow, if I remember, though it's supposed to cool off a touch.)

Screen ran pretty good, and we were out of there before noon as predicted, even with one group bringing their shirts literally as we were about to start cleaning the screen to head home. The design came out pretty good - looked decent in turquoise. And nobody bought a turquoise shirt. Almost invariably, there's That One Shirt that's the exact wrong color for the ink. (Next week's design will be in orange, so we'll see if we get any orange shirts then.) And they already paid us, so that's dealt with.

Got a few things I'd been waiting for in the mail, which was nice. (Season 3 of The Expanse on Blu-Ray was among them; will be starting on that this weekend, relative interference pending.)

tiddlywinks said:

Reg - maybe look into regenerative agriculture as a term for some interesting reading relative to your interests, as well as carbon farming?

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That's the term! Thank you!

ktdude said:

Thanks everyone for answering my question - it's much appreciated and duly noted. I wouldn't dream of posting something with bad grammar/spelling but there may still be rookie errors (I'm concerned about possible POV issues purely because I see them being picked up a lot where I wouldn't even have noticed!) so I guess it may just be a case of suck it and see - I'm building up the courage, we'll see if I ever get to it. I know it will be really useful.

Thank you all you guys are so helpful!

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If you want to start off small, maybe you should try out the "Hook me in 200 words or less" thread (in the SFF SYW forum...I assume that's your genre). It's a lot less intimidating.

Morning, Cantina! My sinuses are feeling way better after yesterday's storm. Unfortunately, I got very little writing done yesterday because Megan Whalen Turner revealed the cover for the last Queen's Thief book and I got off on a total fangirling tangent with my fellow fangirl on another site. XD Oh well.

My dad has an eye doctor appointment today...the one that can take HOURS...so I'll have some solid reading time this afternoon. Better go do the werdz before then.

Yay for spending 10 hours re-engineering a spreadsheet... making it needlessly complex. Sigh. But that's what the boss wants.

ION, I'm madly pitching on Pit2Pub today. Tomorrow is IWSGPit. Exhausting stuff! I also heard back from my mentor on PitProm - she had very few changes. Said my stuff was super-clean, and pretty much good to go! So, tonight I'll send in my few tweaks and send it to her. She'll submit Thursday and we'll go head to head with others.

IOON, I got in 1200 words on my WIP Monday and 1350 yesterday. Things are moving apace.

zanzjan said:

ktdude, if you want to, you can always preface your crit piece by stating at the start of the post that you're new and this is your first piece posted for crit. Some of our regulars can be very blunt and right down to business, so a heads-up isn't a bad thing if you're nervous.

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Thanks zanzjan - I definitely intend to preface with 'PLEASE BE GENTLE - THIN-SKINNED NEWBIE ALERT' or something similar, as I've seen a few of the crits running currently and whilst incredibly helpful they pull no punches, I need to be eased into it!

paddismac said:

If you want to start off small, maybe you should try out the "Hook me in 200 words or less" thread (in the SFF SYW forum...I assume that's your genre). It's a lot less intimidating.

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I can see your point but I'm not the most economical with words. It's my main failing and one I'm trying hard to address. So maybe it could be good practice! I'll see what I can come up with.

greendragon - I can't believe how many Twitter pitch comps there are, good on you for keeping track of them all. Definitely something I want to have a crack at once I'm finished. Good luck!

Good afternoon, Cantina! I am extra sleep-deprived today but have so much work to get done. I'm trying to decide between polishing up an existing story to submit for this resisting fascism anthology, or putting my other projects on hold to write something new.

greendragon - Hooray for productivity!

recoveringandroid - Oooh, looks like an interesting anthology. Wish I had something that would work for that...

*waves to various and sundry other people*

Wednesday afternoon, and work felt longer than it should have thanks to a rash of red lights slowing us down. And on the way home I hit just about every red light one can hit, even the lights that almost never turn red. One o' those days, in other words... But I restocked float supplies, and I got a cheap slice of chocolate cake in lieu of lunch ('cause I don't get lunch on days I have to shop my way home), and I have a while to unwind and rest my feet before I have to start dinner.

Well, my dad didn't go to his eye doctor appointment today because somebody at the doctor's office didn't record that he HAD an appointment. We know we scheduled one because my mom puts them in her phone while she's standing there at the nurse's desk scheduling it, but apparently they messed up there was no record of one any time this month. Good thing it occurred to us that we hadn't ever gotten a confirmation call this week and called them before driving 45 minutes to get there.

On the upside we got to take da beagle for a nice long walk instead.

*peers up from smibble pile after causing mayhem and destruction in the form of story plots over in the Royalty thread*

*whispers: "I started reading The Witcher"*
*cackles*
*sinks back into the smibbles, leaving cookie crumbs in her wake*

Woke up this morning to find the first feed-back from an early reader on my WIP's chapter five... and I'm still wiping up the blood.


It all sounded positive on the surface, until I got to the end and read: "I am intrigued to find out who this Cavenaugh chap is/was."


Umm, what? What?? "this Cavanaugh chap" is NOT a new character. He was introduced in the prologue, has already appeared in two scenes (which, to me, were very engaging), and a search tells me his name has been mentioned nine more times apart from those... There are even three separate mentions of his profession...


I know anything's possible, but could I really have screwed the pooch that badly for a character to be so totally forgettable?? <sigh> When I questioned her I got back a very unsatisfying "it's me not you" reply, claiming she's just super bad with names... Now I'm wondering if she's actually done more than scan anything I've sent her.


Ah, the joys of searching for "the right" betas (or alphas, or guinea pigs...)


<crawls into the smibble pile feeling like a Dunning-Kruger hack and WEEPS over the loss of forward momentum>

paddismac said:

<crawls into the smibble pile feeling like a Dunning-Kruger hack and WEEPS over the loss of forward momentum>

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Aw, Paddi. Some people really are just bad with names and, IIRC, there's actual research that says our brains don't store things as well when we read them on screens. If she's the only one to have forgotten the character there's no need to worry about it, though I understand how jarring/confidence hurting it can be when any beta seems to totally overlook something you thought you made obvious, or makes you wonder if they've even read what you sent them that closely. From what you said about how many times the character has been mentioned previously, it sounds like it really is her and not you. Give yourself time to process then brush off her comment and move forward with confidence again. And...maybe try getting a different beta.

E.F.B. said:

Aw, Paddi. Some people really are just bad with names and, IIRC, there's actual research that says our brains don't store things as well when we read them on screens. If she's the only one to have forgotten the character there's no need to worry about it, though I understand how jarring/confidence hurting it can be when any beta seems to totally overlook something you thought you made obvious, or makes you wonder if they've even read what you sent them that closely. From what you said about how many times the character has been mentioned previously, it sounds like it really is her and not you. Give yourself time to process then brush off her comment and move forward with confidence again. And...maybe try getting a different beta.

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And it's often impossible to know for sure. We know exactly what's going on, and our readers have only the words we give them (and their own understanding of the nuances of what those words MEAN). It amazes me that we can communicate with each other at all on any level...

zanzjan said:

Maybe they meant get to know them more in terms of following their arc?

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That would have been nice, but no, she readily admitted she had zero memory of having seen that name before. Oh well, for now it's just a single data point. If anyone else has issues, I'll go back in and see what I can do to beef the guy up.

SOOO... I was in Pit2Pub yesterday, and got a like from Edge SF&F! I read up on them, and submitted today. Now I wait...