Last night my writing group met. Along with the latest sections from Newshound’s and Poetess’ novels, we discussed my recent story.
I wound up getting a lot of praise for this story, which surprised me, because I still thought it was kinda marshy and weak in the middle. People loved the concept. The Poetess said something about how I always find an element of hopefulness no matter what dark tale I’m telling, which I thought was a truly lovely compliment. In short, it was a nice night.
Major comments included the fact that relevant info could have been seeded earlier, and also that some of my red herrings and false suspects were, uh, not so hot. Newshound pointed out that the interesting thing about the final reveal was not who did it, but why. So, maybe I can do without some of those weak suspects. They are, in all honesty, not the most interesting thing the story has going on.
Despite the positive feedback, I really feel that this story is not where I want it to be. I’ve started thinking of it as almost a mini-masterwork, something I really want to be hitting on all cylinders all the time. I am willing to put some more effort into this story to get it to match up with what’s in my head.
In other news, I sent off the remainder of my Boot Camp tuition yesterday. I could have (and probably would have) put this off for another week, but I woke up yesterday from a horrible dream in which it was the very last day for payment, and I was on the phone with Orson Scott Card, trying desperately to give him my credit card number. The Discover card in my wallet belonged to my mom for some reason, the one in Mark’s wallet had two conflicting numbers, and when I went looking for my Visa card I discovered all that was left in my wallet was a bunch of old receipts. And meanwhile Orson Scott Card is all like, “Um, ok…I guess I’ll wait,” and no doubt twirling his finger beside his ear.
Not a good dream. Oh, and in other other news, I’m writing this blog post on my iPad.