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10/24/2005

Note's from Viable Paradise

Schedule was busy -- daily critique, writing exercises, group dinner, lecture and Q&A plus some game time and meeting group. Afterward, you did your critiques of about 80 pages and wrote on the writing exercises.

In addition to the general group critique, we had one-on-ones with Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden and James MacDonald and Debra Doyle. I wished I had more written on my 2nd novel which I used in the sessions. Basic feedback -- metaphorical, poetic language is more consistent with fantasy -- they need to go with science fiction. My voice is more mainstream and needs to be more genre oriented -- think tech talk, I'll see. Debra Doyle had good suggestions about organizing the overall story flow. The big issue was conveying 16 years in a more immediate, energized form. Her suggestion to let my main character speak was also helpful, I was delaying it to see where I was going. One of the exercises -- right bit based on an object pulled out of a bag got me the start for her first scene, and a hook practice brought me scene starts for several characters. Patrick answered many of my questions about order -- publisher handles blurbs, promotion, copy-editing. It's not necessary to hire a professional editor, they're looking for good active stories, things that stand out. He wasn't aware of the UW's commercial/popular fiction certificate program.

Big messages: money flows to the writer, the groups manuscripts would be in the top 5% of slush pile, to get published you need to be in the top 2%. They get 6000 manuscripts a year. This is confidence building.

Lectures: emotional difficulties -- the ups and downs of going between your logical and creative self -- boy did I know this one in depth, but it was nice to know I was the only one. Research -- lots and lots. State of the industry -- science fiction has done well with the move to big box booksellers -- they're getting much more shelf space and sales. Short story markets -- start at the top and work down, keep submitting.  I can't find my notes so I'll add more on this topic later.

Posted at 01:47 AM in Conferences |

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