Badly Dressed Criticism

If people don’t like being criticised, why do they circulate their work for criticism?

When I’ve written something I always give it to my husband to read.  I do this partly because he’s closest to me, but mostly because I trust his opinion, because he’ll never shy away from telling me something is bad.  He does this with clothes too by the way.  There have been times when I’ve put on something I think look goods, but he’ll soon tell me if it doesn’t because he doesn’t want others to think badly of me, and he does the same with my writing.

            I appreciate a tough review,  I want my reviewers to be nitpicking, because I know if I put something out to a wider audience, there will be people out there ready to tear it to shreds.  Much better that it gets torn apart where I still have the opportunity to re-write than after it’s in print.

This doesn’t mean I don’t get upset about bad comments, sometimes I do, but as long as I know that it is aimed at improving my work, I’ll take it on the chin.  Of course I don’t always agree with criticisms either, sometimes the commenter has missed the point, sometimes they haven’t seen the fuller picture and sometimes they are just plain wrong.  But I always listen because a lot of the time, they are right and they do have a point.

            So I do the same with I critique other people’s work.  I will pick up on little details that don’t fit.  I will say if the dialog is out of place with the setting and what/when the people are.  I do this because it has helped me when it has been done to me.  For example, I have a story called Unclear Triangle, when I wrote it I thought I was just writing everyday English speech.  But my husband was quick to point out that actually there were a lot of Americanisms in there, so I built that into the storyline and it gave me an unexpected extra background story and more colour to my characters.

            Unclear Triangle was started about fifteen years ago and in the second chapter I talk about wanting high speed camera film, this week I put it up for criticism with the local writers circle and it was pointed out that with modern digital cameras, hardly anyone uses film any more.  So either I have to explain why high speed film is being used by that character, or I have to take that idea out to fit with the modern era.

            I also reviewed three other stories at the circle, and clearly my comments were taken as being me ripping into people.

            All in all, I was rather disappointed at this week’s weak criticism, it was less helpful than I was hoping for.  I didn’t go to be patted on the back.  I don’t need everyone to say they ‘liked it’, if everyone likes it, I won’t have done my job right.  I want to be better than that.  People shouldn’t like everything, not everything is likeable to everyone.  Universally liked means universally bland.  When it comes to writing, it should move you, you should feel something.  Love it or hate it, have a reaction. 

So, I wondered, I went to a writers circle to make me a better writer, why do other people go?

One In A Million

Someone said “you’re first million words don’t count”.  I say someone because I’ve Google-ed this and I’ve found several different people to whom this quote or mis-quote is attributed, though Robert Heinlein and Ray Bradbury, but I like the idea that it was Stephen King.

            Anyway, I was interested enough to wonder how much I’ve written, so last night I fired up Excel and Word, and went through all my files, counting words and adding it all up.  It was a surprising and odd experience.  I listed the books and my short stories, took only the count of the final versions even if the original were longer, occasionally much longer.  

            As I was going through I had a few surprises, not least of all was that several pieces I ‘knew’ were not there.  Actually it turned out that on the whole, they were there, they’d just got lost in my random approach to file saving, next job up this weekend is sorting out my filing.  Also, my hubby pointed out that given the amount of work on my hard drive that if I lost this laptop or it got damaged, I’d have lost a hell of a lot of work that I’d never really get back, so after I’d finished the count, I did burn all my files to a CD.

            Back to the surprising.  Because I’d been thinking about this millions words thought, I’d been thinking about it in work Friday, so at lunchtime, I started making a list of the stories I could remember and a estimating how long they were.  I didn’t keep the list, but I know as I was making the new one, I was rather surprised to find just how wrong I was on some of the counts.  There are a couple of cases where I was way out.  One romance I thought was 90,000 words turned out to be 60,647.  Another I’d thought around the same size was 84,086.  But the two that surprised me were one of my early mysteries that got an agent, but no publisher, which I’d thought was about 100,000 words, turned out to be 121,985, and the last is, of all things, the only book I’ve actually self published, Foreshadows (available on Amazon for Kindle), I thought it was around 120,000, it was actually 147,181.

            Anyway, I’ve got the list, I’ve done the maths, and here it is: 1,126,533 over 38 distinct stories.  Since my day job is heavily set on mathematics, did a number of statistics while I was there, I’ve tabulated them below, in case anyone’s interested. 

            Of course this count is only what I’ve got on the laptop.  And only the fiction, it doesn’t include the raft of non-fiction I’ve written, nor my journals, nor my blogs.  Also, I’ve got a couple of boxes worth in the loft that were saved on three and a half inch floppy discs (yes unfortunately, I really am that old), which I’ve never transferred, and never will do now, I mean, who’s got a floppy drive any more?  Mind you, I’m not sure I’ve even got the discs any more.  Truth is anything that old probably isn’t worth having any more, but while they sit where I can’t see them, they are skeletons in the loft that I can’t quite bring myself to cremate. 

            So, hey ho, that’s a million words and more.  Hopefully that means that now I’m be able to ‘write’. There again, give me a pen and paper, or computer, or even my smart phone and I’ll write whether I’m ‘able’ to or not.

Total (as at 15/03/2013)	1,126,553
Average	29,646
Max	147,181
Min	94
Mode	1,700
Median	2,842

Time Races

Well time has certainly been racing for me this week. My new job is a bit of information overload but what's really getting to me is the fact that 2 days a week I'm still doing my old job.  Now I have to be honest - I love my old job that’s why I had to think very hard about even taking the new one.

It was agreed that I would do this split so I have to but what's worrying me is that the language being used suggests that the old bosses are expecting this position to go on indefinitely and there is no evidence of finding a replacement despite the fact that I gave them a CV of an ex-colleague I knew was available. Thing is I ended up spending hours on Sunday working when I wanted to be relaxing. As it was Mothers Day it would have been nice to have spent time with my kids only my son is away at Uni and didn't even bother texting me and my daughter was in Paris with her school on a French language holiday.  So just me, the hangover and a hang over hubby oh and the workload.

Have managed to keep up with the resolution to enter at least one competition a month and actually entered two last night. I also managed to find a piece for a flash fiction competition which I'm considering putting in for.  My hubby read it last night, said it was very dark.  Well the judge said he wanted to avoid formula and read something that moved him, well if this story doesn't move him I don't know what will.

Time to get on with other stuff.

The Ring in a Circle

The last two weeks I’ve struggled to find something to write about, which is why my blogs haven’t been as regular as they could have been. Tonight blogging wasn’t on my to do list, however, I thought I just had to get this done.

About a year ago I went to CrimeFest in Bristol and among others, I met Sally Spedding, and in conversation she suggested that I try my local Writers Circle, she even gave me some contact details, only a problem was, I didn’t get around to using them before my email account threw a fit and deleted everything in my inbox for no good reason and the details were lost.  So on Monday, I was on the internet and for no good reason I looked up Swansea Writers Circle, the link that came up to the council’s website, which linked to Swansea and District Writers Circle and gave me all the details I needed.  The site told me that they met on the first Wednesday of the month, so today I went.

The only other writers circle I’ve ever been to was in Cardiff and probably more than twenty years ago, so I was expecting the same sort of thing, people reading their work and other critiquing it.  But no.

Got there and there was an agenda and a speaker.  I was quite surprised.  The speaker was Melanie Lloyd, a woman who writes about boxing, she had two books out entitled Sweet Fighting Man and Sweet Fighting Man Vol 2.  When I realised she was going to be talking about boxing, I can’t say I was overly enthralled, but she was a really good speaker.  Absolutely enthusiastic about the subject, Melanie was a joy to listen to.  And though she spoke of loads of boxers I’d never heard of, she had interesting stories to tell that I enjoyed listening. Thing was, I’ve been trying to work on a noire flavour book and recently read Choke Hold by Christa Faust, and two of the three lead characters are boxers, so some of the stories Melanie told, seemed very resonant with that book, so obviously Ms Faust and Ms Lloyd have both got a talent for evoking the same imagery, emotions and reactions.

Strangely enough, I entered and won a prize in the raffle, but since I won a bottle of bottle of wine and I’m trying to give up drinking (not exactly working, but I’m trying), I suggested that it be pulled again, and it went to the other first timer there.  Nice that huh?

Anyway, feels good to feel enthusiastic about writing again, so thanks to the Swansea and District Writers Circle for that.