In Today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* I’m Serializing Again
* To Anyone Whose Work I’ve Critiqued
* Of Interest
Quote of the Day
“Happiness is your current situation, uh, minus expectations.” Comedian Jimmy Carr
I’m Serializing Again
Awhile back I started a story about a highly competent young woman named Marie Dubois.
Over the past few days I’ve refurbished, written, and finished that story at something over 7500 words. Best of all, this story’s trying to lead me into two other stories, both of which will be novels.
Anyway, I decided since this story is kind of my second fiction-writing “debut” I’d publish it to my free Stanbrough Writes substack.
The first installment will land at 10 am on Saturday (July 11) and I’ll publish another installment every other day through Wednesday, July 22.
I hope you’ll stop by to take a look. Of course, if you’re already subscribed to Stanbrough Writes, each installment will land squarely in your inbox.
I hope you’re all writing fiction out there and enjoying yourselves with it. I know I am.
To Anyone Whose Work I’ve Critiqued
Recently a writer sent me an uplifting email. (Thanks, A.S.!) In part, he wrote
When I first started writing, I thought I was writing into the dark. But then you checked my work and, rightly so, said that I was intruding on the story. I felt destroyed. Not that you hurt my feelings, but you were pointing out a truth that I didn’t want to hear.
Instead of enjoying the process and letting my characters tell the story, I tried to “figure” out what they should say. Instead of letting the words flow out and record what my characters were giving me, I wanted to write it my own way.
However, now I have learned from my mistakes and will let my characters do the work for me. Thank you for your help and the advice you have given me and other people.
For a self-styled writing instructor, what could be more uplifting to read than that?
As I told my young friend in my response, I focus so tightly on trying to help other writers cut their learning curve that I often forget to point out even what’s ‘good’ in a story, much less all the little generic niceties people like to hear.
Among my many faults is that I tend to let the honest critique come barging through, and sometimes it comes through a little harshly, or in a way that the writer might take as harsh.
That is never my intention, but for some reason I’ve always preferred blunt honesty—both incoming and outgoing—to encouraging platitudes that aren’t helpful to presentation when you’re down in the weeds of a story. I think that’s why I chose Dean Wesley Smith as my own mentor.
So if I’ve ever inadvertently hurt your feelings with a critique, my apologies. I promise, I’m only trying to sand the rough edges off your learning curve so you don’t have to stumble across all the same epiphanies I had to stumble across.
Believe me, you’ll encounter plenty more aha moments on your own as you continue to put new words on the page.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
Dean also recently wrote a few posts about the “20 Books to 50K” thing. You can find those here.
Why Emotional Scenes Still Feel Flat