ISBW #45 - Letting Go
00:01 I Should Be Writing #45: July 27, 2006
00:57 Jim Kelly chastized me at TrinocCon, so now I have a plan.
01:37 Stressful week with birthday and sick kiddo.
02:30 Discussion on Escape Pod.
03:55 You have to let your work go.
08:00 Interview with Jim Kelly and John Kessel are elsewhere on this feed.
10:40 The short list for the Parsec Awards has been announced!
11:25 New fiction podcast: Obsidian River.
11:55 Little Owl Mentoring Program
13:14 Thanks for listening!
About the Author: I am a writer and podcast producer, writing for magazines and RPGs. I am a wanna-be fiction writer with several short fiction, comic scripts, and one novel sale. Playing For Keeps will be out August, '08.
Jonathan Sherwood | Aug 2, 2006 | Reply
Happy birthday Mur! Sorry about the sick kid - I’m in the same boat at the moment. Puts writing in perspective.
When you’re talking about disconnecting yourself from the story, I think you have to differentiate between responding to reviews of a published work, and responding to solicited critiques. Certainly, there’s no point in defending your work in either case, but in a critique you’re looking to understand why a reader reacted the way he or she did - and to do that you have to still be “attached” to the story. You have to understand why that reader is saying what they are, how it shows patterns in your writing that need to be fixed (”Your female characters are always weak.”), or points about writing that you don’t seem to grasp (”You’re telling us most of the story with little dramatization.”)
So I think detachment makes sense when you’re talking about a published work, but when you’re listening to other writers commenting on your writing, I think you still have to listen to them as the piece’s very engaged author.
Anonymous | Aug 3, 2006 | Reply
Hello Mur,
Been listening to your show for some time and I felt i should share the news. I just submitted my first short story to escape pod. Now comes the fun part of waiting.
I found an ineresting way of keeping track of submissions that i thought i should share. If you go into the properties of a word document you can add a comment to it. in this comment area you can put the date of submission and the publisher you submitted to. I hope someone finds this helpful.
Thanks for all the great advice. I better get going, I should be writing.
Jay
Keikomushi | Aug 6, 2006 | Reply
I just listened to the cast and found some of your points quite useful. I am presently working on my first novel but have been quite defensive of my work in the past. Thanks for the comments!