Writing Groups/Reviews/Jealousy/Working Hard

Writing Groups

I’ve joined a few on Facebook recently and I’m enjoying reading some fun stories. Any I like are being posted on my Facebook author page.  It takes a lot of my time, but I feel giving something back is important and I’m enjoying looking at all the stories.

Reviews

Because I’m reading other peoples work I’m also reviewing them on Amazon when I can. It’s really difficult because you want to be helpful and give a balanced review, but often I’m worried I’m being too hard.  Honesty is always the best policy in my opinion and I do believe you can, and should, give critical feedback in a positive way.  I tend to write two different sides to my reviews: one with my own stupidly high expectations for the stories I read, but given in a positive way; and one from an object point of view as if I’m the target audience (if I don’t feel I am). Ultimately it’s just my stupid opinion so it holds little value, but it’s fun reviewing. That said it does have some value though as every review and piece of feedback, whether good or bad, is important. Every experience holds its weight and value as long a person is willing to see it.

Jealousy

This week I read a new friends writing and it, and the story, were so good that I’m incredibly jealous. I read the 18,000 piece in a few hours. It burned my eyes out of their sockets- thanks to my stupid dry eyes issues, but it was worth it. The story telling and writing was just so fantastic. All I wanted to do was read more and more to find out what was going to happen. I’m looking forward to reading more of her work- but hopefully over a longer period of time, and in little doses, so my eyes don’t get destroyed J.

Working Hard

I seem to have a lot of writing stuff on my plate at the moment, but I love it! I’m probably taking on too much though and hope I don’t burn myself out.  However it’s going okay. To finish I’ll give a quick run down of my own writing:

-Just finished going through BoP... AGAIN! ‘sigh’ But actually loving it still. I’m going to give the last half a read over and then the whole thing. Then... well we’ll see ;)

-I’ve been marketing the Steampunk Anthology recently and a few people have bought it. I really hope they like it and give good reviews, and spread the word. Relying on other people’s enthusiasm to spread the word is a massive part of this journey and it’s why I really want my writing to be the best it can be. I let people down first time around, as my story wasn’t at the standard it should have been. It put people off and I have plans to rectify my mistakes and hopefully get people on board to help me as this time it will be the best it can be.

We also got another review for the Anthology on amazon.co.uk and once again my story was one of the reader’s favourites. This is really nice to hear and gives me a needed confidence boast. It made me think more and that maybe my story is actually good. I thought of how I could get more feedback and had an idea to ask the Gothic Horror lecturer at my old university to take a look. My story is an Alternate-Reality take on the Frankenstein story with a sprinkle of Steampunk, so thought he might enjoy it. I emailed him and he said he would read it. He said he was busy but would read it in a week or so. I’m excited and nervous to hear what he thinks.

-Once BoP is done I’m not sure whether to go and do a quick run through of Empiphany again, or go onto  the following book after BoP, ‘Nurture Fails, Nature Remains,’ which needs the style change I gave BoP. I think I’ll do Emph first (it won’t be as much work), and then NF-NR, but I could do it the other way around. We’ll see how i feel in a few weeks when BoP is out of my hands...

The Butterfly Effect

I just wanted to write a short update of what's going on.

The editing the Book of Prophecy seems to be going well. Sammy had it for a while and has done what she can in her very busy life, and I'm so grateful for all she does. However I felt like it was time for me to take it back and see if my writing has improved enough to make a difference. But more importantly so she didn't have to do the majority of the editing work; especially when she could be doing more important things. It turns out that this was the right choice. I sent her some of my recent edits and she says I'm on the right path. It was nice to hear this as it's been a long struggle to improve. The plan is to keep working on the last half of the book and send her chapters here and there to look at. Then change anything that needs changing. Once this is done I'll give it a read through and send it to her and see what she says.

It's not all easy going though as Sammy has highlighted some issues with character development and plot weaknesses. This is good though as she's always pushing me beyond my own expectations and helping me see how I can improve the story. If it wasn't for her this story would never have reached it's potential and I would never have improved the way I have.

With her constructive criticism I have made some changes to the plot and this is why I've titled this the Butterfly Effect. A few small, but significant changes have been made at one of the most pivotal points of the story. Although these changes are small it has meant spending a lot of time changing other things so it all fits. It does seem to fit well though and I'm excited by these changes.

The next few months will be spent doing a lot of work on this story, but hopefully some time this year it will actually reach its potential and be finished.