Day: April 20, 2007

This past week I have been hard at work on a story to submit to Julie Czerneda for her anthology. I hammered out characters and events and conflicts. I had reached the point where I felt like it was pretty much done. I gave it to several people to read. Nancy and Janci gave me good “tweak it here” type feedback. The third person, Chalain, dissected my 6 page story with 16 pages of commentary. When I was done reading it, I was ready to cry. I felt like crying because he was right. He’d picked everything apart and I could see very clearly that I could not leave my story the way it was. So there I was with all the pieces of my story and no idea how to put it back together again. Scattered around me all the pieces seemed to have equal value, yet they could not all fit into 5000 words.

I talked to Chalain about his review and by the end of the talk I could see where I needed to go. I get to keep the characters, events, and conflicts, but the viewpoint must change. This means jettisoning some major character development that I spent a lot of time fleshing out. So right now I’m re-writing the whole thing. I saved a draft of the other version, so I can revert to it if I want to. I probably won’t want to. By the time I’m done with this version I’ll love it as much as the other one, if not more. Unfortunately this means I am back to drafting. I was so happy to be tweaking and refining. I really hope all this effort is rewarded by acceptance into the anthology.

I’ve often listened to Janci as she talks about how her writer’s group rips apart her stories. It always sounded so hostile to me, but she always expressed gratitude that the did it. I didn’t understand, now I think I do. If the story is well made, it can’t be ripped apart. If it can be ripped apart then it needs to be made stronger. These kinds of critiques stress test the stories. No one wants to send a poorly made story out into the world. Chalain has just gotten himself permanently added to my pool of draft readers. He did me a painful, but necessary, service today.

This morning I checked comments on yesterday’s rambling entry and was informed that I am boring. I deleted the actual comment because it contained profanity. Naturally it was anonymous. I am left to wonder, if I am so boring, why was it worth this person’s time to inform me how boring I am? What did the person hope to accomplish? The answer I’m afraid is that the person is grouchy about something entirely different and is spewing the bile everywhere. The troll’s boredom is not my fault.

The first time my journal was trolled was on my fifth entry. It was emotionally devastating. This time I am able to shrug and delete the comment while wondering idly at the motivations of someone who wanders through and randomly throws stones. The troll was right, that particular entry was fairly boring. I wrote it not to entertain others, but to record for myself and to tell Howard (who is away at a convention) how my day went. Many of my entries are similarly boring to others. But then that is part of livejournal and blogging in general. Not every entry can be brilliant or entertaining.