You Need More Ellen Datlow In Your Life!

If you write at all - short stories, novels, any fiction at all,  then you should know who Ellen Datlow is. Multiple award winning editor, Ellen has produced anthology after anthology, working with countless famous authors and editors. If you want to know more about the state of the industry, or how to write better, Ellen is someone you should know.

Special products she is currently offering are:

For $350 (two premiums available): Pick Ellen's Brain: Ellen Datlow will answer all your editing/publishing questions on a one-to-one basis for 1.5 hours in person (at a coffee shop if you're in New York City), or by phone, or by Skype.
(fearfulsymmetries.com)

For $250:
Short Story Critique: Written critique of your short story, up to 7500 words, by Altered Fluid writers' group members Paul Berger, Richard Bowes, K Tempest Bradford, Kris Dikeman, Alaya Johnson, Rajan Khanna, Matthew Kressel, Eugene Myers, Devin Poore, David Mercurio Rivera, Lilah Wild, Greer Woodward, plus print and e-book editions of Fearful Symmetries, plus acknowledgment in both print and electronic editions of Fearful Symmetries. Plus print and e-book editions of Fearful Symmetries, plus acknowledgment in both print and electronic editions of Fearful Symmetries.
fearfulsymmetries.com

For more information, check out Ellen Datlow's Facebook page

Call My Agent Open to Critique Queries

Sydney based Call My Agent Blog has put up a call for queries. They aim to critique a few for general consumption, to help us all learn how to send the best query letters possible.

Go and check it out, and if you have something you're working on, send it today! Offer closes on 30th November.

--
Sarah

The Value of Wordle

Wordle is one of the fascinating little programmes which develop when people have a lot of time, and a lot of enthusiasm on their hands. In any age other than this one, the wordle wouldn't even be a concept.

You can find Wordle here!

Wordle is a fantastic writer's tool. All you need to do is select All of your text, put it into the Wordle text box, and paste it in. Then hit GO and see what comes up. I recommend you change the background to white, and then print it out for further ruminations.

My favourite use for Wordle is to spot weak words. It's also excellent for spotting repetitive uses of words. It should show clearly who your main characters are - and they are not always the point of view characters. This can be a tool to interrogate your novel in a completely different way.

Onto the personal stuff... this is the Wordle on my book at draft one.

I can see all sorts of words I am going to examine and fix in the novel - but one step at a time. I wrote this in a rush, and there's been a lot of cutting since this wordle was created, and there's going to be a lot more. (I didn't actually have a plot until about a third of the way into the novel. So that's about a third that needs to go! And then the last two thirds needs to be explored and ... fixed.)

You can see my lead character's name very clearly. I was surprised at who of my secondary characters showed up, and the strength of their place in the Wordle above. I didn't think Marissa had been given that much page-time, but it seems she gets mentioned as much as or more than Killan, who I thought had more page-time than any other secondary character.

There's a lot of words I am going to be examining with a fine toothed comb - back, just, enough, one, something, nothing, think, get, eyes, like, thought, feel,... lots of weak words in there. The next time I post this, expect it to be interesting to see what's different!


Wordle is also a way of making both Poetry and Art from your novel. The size of the font relates to the number of times you used each word, presenting both immediate visual cues, and a poetic display of symbolic relationships.


--
Sarah

How We Started

The house turned out to be an added incentive...

Perched in bushland on a hillside at Eagle Bay with a panoramic view of the Indian Ocean, it gave us a perfect vantage point to view migrating whales. We could hear the surf pounding below and watch native birds feed within touching distance. We were far enough away to escape everyday distractions and close enough for the drive to be an easy one. In all, a beautiful place to visit…

We were led there by a common interest – a need for space enough to talk about our novels without having to rein ourselves in out of fear of boring the pants off our friends.

We are members of the active and well attended Katharine Susannah Prichard Speculative Fiction Writers’ group, which still provides us with fantastic online opportunities for critiquing short stories and novel chapters. However, each of us has completed at least one novel and needed longer and more comprehensive critting sessions than the group could provide. We wanted to critique our novels in their entirety rather than as fragmented chapters over a matter of weeks. We also saw we had mutual compatibilities in terms of genres and interests, and a need for more intensive training. Furthermore, we were prepared to devote a great deal of time and effort to each other’s work – a grand total of 610,000 words – which we read closely and critiqued over four weeks prior the retreat.

After valuable feedback from the masters of retreat critiquing, Ripping Ozzie Reads we decided to give ourselves three days away. We wrote up our critiques beforehand and allocated three hours of critting time per novel. This enabled each critter to have a maximum of half an hour to have their say, while the author remained silent until the end. We finished each session with an hour-long discussion, which mostly became a brainstorming exercise where we mooted alternative plot trajectories and outcomes. Sometimes suggestions turned out to be not quite what the writer had in mind but, after consideration, became catalysts for the discovery of new ways of improving aspects of plotting and characterisation they had not thought about.

Our expertise is varied, which turned out to be a bonus rather than a problem. The more experienced critters helped train the less experienced ones, while the less experienced critters provided useful comments, not only as readers, but also as students practising their newly acquired skills. Even when differences of opinion did occur, we reminded ourselves that every critter’s comment is a valid reader response deserving, in the very least, to be listened to. This made for a friendly and supportive environment that enabled us to improve our writing and to critique thoroughly with respect and trust. Not once did we reach for the box of strategically placed tissues on the critting table.


With the day's critting over, we finished up with food, drink and movies. One would think that three vegetarians and two omnivores would complicate things, but our menus were unplanned. Kudos for the sushi, gourmet salads, beetroot chips, cheese selections and guinea figs. Kudos again for the valuable plotting lessons gleaned from the movies, made even more enjoyable with a good dash of Baileys.