Feedback - Blech!

I've decided that feedback on your stories sucks. You only get it on rejected pieces and so it is normally bad.

Yeah I know - what doesn't kill you and all that malarkey, but I think I would prefer to live in blissful ignorance believing that everything I write is pure gold.

I think I see why Editors don't like giving feedback - it's because it pisses people off!

And another thing - who, gives: a damn" about punctuation anyway!!!! Editors are the only ones who remember all the rules and then take evil pleasure in pointing out the mistakes of innocent writers.

*deep breath*

Managing Woman

I have a new theory about managing woman. I have a fairly big team and in the past tended to treat men and woman the same. I now think that this is a mistake.

You can say pretty much anything to a man and it doesn't matter because they probably aren't listening. More likely they are just waiting for you to stop so that they can speak. This may be a tad harsh but even if they are listening they will have forgotten it 10 minutes later due to our gnat like attention span. Men also don't put a lot of thought into what they say - so analysing our comments for hidden meaning is a wasted exercise.

Woman on the other hand do listen to what you say - and worse - they go away and think about it, analysing every nuance. Then they come back and want to discuss it - long after you can even remember making some throw away comment.

There is probably the makings of a story in that somewhere. In fact check out this short expose - It is very funny and I think it captures my point.

WRITING STUFF - Blog, Website or Both?

I've seen a few people mention that a "proper" writer needs to have a Blog and a Web site. I understand the need to promote yourself and start building a brand - hence this blog!

I went blog rather than website because it is easier and the format encourages you to update it regularly. Websites can often languish due to the effort of updating them.

So I can't work out what a website would do that this blog doesn't already. Anything I could put on a website I can stick on this blog. I could even have additional pages linked to the blog (if I had anything to put on them).

The only reason that I can think of having a website is to reserve the domain (eg davidsuch.com) as another branding mechanism.

So I don't get it.

But I'm happy to be corrected ...

Eclecticism Ezine January 2009 News

BEWARE - Shameless self-promotion follows


Eclecticism E-zine has its 7th issue due for release on Friday 30 January 2009.

The issue’s theme is ‘Twisted Fairy Tales’, and features work from: Rijn Collins, Jim Euclid, Amy Mackiewicz, Holly Painter, Simon Petrie, Susan Rodio, Stacey Roy, Deborah Sheldon, David Such, Pavelle Wesser, and Natalie Shau (Featured Artist).

WRITING & SHORT STORIES

I see that Stephen King has just published another book of short stories. I think he is one of the few main stream authors that still writes shorts (and can get them published). In fact two of my favourite stories are shorts from Mr King ("Stand by Me" and "The Shawshank Redemption").

BT and I had a discussion on the merits or otherwise of writing short speculative fiction. I like this format because I have a short attention span and can finish a story before I get bored and drift onto something else. I also like the sweet thrill of getting a piece accepted. I get more endorphin shots if I up my submission rate. Since my acceptance ratio has stabilised, the lower the word count the more stories I get to submit, which in turn leads to more acceptances.

I also feel like I am not ready to churn out 80,000 to 100,000 words. If I am going to spit out that quantity I want to be sure of the quality. This year I'm going to continue to focus on the short and flash formats. 2010 will be the year of the novel.

WRITING and REJECTION

Quelle Horreur!

Now as a writer I understand that rejection is part of the gig, however does it need to be in bold text and flashing??

Is it just me or is this a bit harsh? Perhaps the AHWA could tone it down a touch, I would suggest a 6pt regular Arial font (white text on a white background preferably).

Notice of Rejection

WRITING QUOTES - From CS Weekly

Bumped up...

See Post Above for updated version.

Back in Oz!

Landed back in Australia today!

The emailing blog update plan obviously didn't work (for a number of reasons) but I will post some interesting snippets from my Christmas / New Year travels over the next week or so.

In other news:

• Go and check out my latest Flash fiction piece "The Hunt" which has just been published at the new look AntipodeanSF.
• Also out now is Dark Fire Issue 37 which contains another Flash story called "How to hide a dead body."