Sunday, August 3, 2008

My writing week

Hi all,

Some day, hopefully soon, one of my posts will shock the hell out of its readers by telling them that in the past week I wrote over 7,000 words, read a novel and a speculative fiction magazine, and finally finished critiquing that critter's dedicated reader novel. Unfortunately, this is not that post.

I struggled to give myself enough time to write anything substantial on six out of the past seven days, usually finding that I was getting into the process just as it was time to stop. I enjoyed drawing a floor plan of the house my characters now inhabit. Once drawn, I had to retrace my main character's movements around the house in the current chapter to ensure he hadn't walked through a wall or urinated in a pot plant.

I am about to write up a critique of a story for critters. It seems that even though I am a dedicated novel reader my membership of critters will be suspended if I don't critique at least one story a month. The story I choose was wrongly listened as SF – it is a werewolf story – so the author can expect a wrathful critique - just kidding - but I find it hard to critique horror, especially when I don't find a story horrifying and fail to connect with, and therefore care about, the fate of the main character.

Oh, and I did read a couple of chapters of the novel I am critiquing.

Graham.

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