From the art perspective we already have a poorly done 3-d mesh of a woman. Her hair is being blown by some random physics engine. Her feet are not proportionate to her body and if you look closely you can see that her calf is really inside her thigh.

It’s bad enough the horrible name of vampire is being smudged by these little love story soap operas. But now we cant even manage to make them look halfway decent. Perhaps a figure drawing class is in order. And some sort of fashion class because that outfit is so last season.

Anyone can email me their work, and I’m open to absolutely anything as long as it’s PG-13 and, if it’s a story, 1,o00 words or less. To get a feel of what the magazine is like you can read it, because each issue is free to download. The magazine is currently on its fourth issue and has published over seventy writers, including some members of YWS, so you’ll be in good company. I love reading everyone’s submissions and choosing the best, and the submissions just get better each time. So far I’ve gotten more submissions with every issue and I fully expect to get even more this time, and I don’t want to be disappointed! So get over to http://www.blinking-cursor.co.uk , read the guidelines (in fact, read them twice), and send me your best work! And here’s a hint: I’m partial to a metaphor or two.

“You’re a writer?”

“Er… yes.”

“What do you write?”

“Poems and stories, mostly.”

“Oh really? What kinds of stories?”

“Well…”

It’s at this point someone, usually a family member or a close friend, will suddenly appear and say, “She’s written a novel too!”

“Oh, really? What is that novel about?”

Introduce: the awkward pause.

…sound familiar?

I think every writer goes through this.  Mind you, I do like talking about my novel to the right people. To the right people, talking about writing is an absolute joy. But this?  This is asking for an instant query letter, made up on the spot without notes. Plus, not only do we have to make an instant query letter, but we somehow have to animate the story through our gestures and face as we talk to you while making it sound like that, yes, we aren’t just spouting off the novel summary that we’ve sent out to agents that have subsequently rejected us.

But it only gets worse.

You see, some of the time, people just say, “That’s nice” and then the conversation is blissfully changed to a relaxing topic, such as the underlying political economy motivating environmentalism. That’s good! I love it when that happens. Rarer times, someone will actually be one of those right people to talk about writing with. I really love those times. It’s fun to talk about writing! But, I swear, my heart drops when I hear someone say, “I’m a writer too!”

I swallow the lump in my throat. “So, what do you write?”

“Oh, anything, really!” And then, this new acquaintance, who just so happens to be a writer, decides that you need to see her work. Now.

Once, I had someone recite to me for the next three days her couplets, which she made off the top of her head.  Another writer decided that I needed to read her story. And, when I protested at reading her handwriting in her notebook, she read her erotic fantasy story to me. All four chapters of it. And then there was that one guy who decided to give me his story that “just wrote itself” when it had, for the cover, a hypodermic needle. Never mind that I don’t like that stuff. And I can go on and on.

Awkward, much?

Lately, I’ve been refusing to admit that I am a writer. So when somebody mentions the novel, I’ll laugh and say that it’s currently being revised (it is!) and that it’s rather terrible and that maybe it’ll finally be published on December 21, 2012, which is conveniently the day the world will end. That stops the writers, mostly. But, I have to admit, it made me feel absolutely ridiculous when I realized I was speaking with a soon-to-be literary agent.

Oops.

And so now, I wait for the moment in which I am awarded my engineering degree with hopes that, one day, I can say with certainty that, no, I really only write on the side and that I really don’t have time to hear their newest erotic novel that they want to read me.

Hopefully, that’ll stop them.

–

What do people do when they hear you’re a writer? What do you tell them?

Things aren’t that bad, but the Associated Foreign Press has a news story about how teenagers and 20-somethings in China are forgetting many of the thousands of characters in their language.  Overblown?  Yes.  Distressing? Not so much.  Learning Chinese character writing is one of the hardest writing skills to learn in the world, and until very recently, the domain of the elite.  Excerpt follows after the break.

Like every Chinese child, Li Hanwei spent her schooldays memorising thousands of the intricate characters that make up the Chinese writing system.

Yet aged just 21 and now a university student in Hong Kong, Li already finds that when she picks up a pen to write, the characters for words as simple as “embarrassed” have slipped from her mind.

“I can remember the shape, but I can’t remember the strokes that you need to write it,” she says. “It’s a bit of a problem.”

Surveys indicate the phenomenon, dubbed “character amnesia”, is widespread across China, causing young Chinese to fear for the future of their ancient writing system.

Young Japanese people also report the problem, which is caused by the constant use of computers and mobile phones with alphabet-based input systems.

Full Source

There are over 40,000 characters in the Chinese alphabet, although most of these are hardly ever used by anyone.  Still, forgetting a few is probably fairly reasonable.  Heck, I’ve forgotten how to write a ‘Z’ in cursive:

For one, an author may have a perfectly good reason for not following the proper style rules.   The Pursuit of Happyness by Chris Gardner is one such example.  There, the author based the title of the book off the name of a daycare, which misspelled ‘happyness’ in its name, that he used to leave his son at during the day.

But for another, the title is a good indicator of how an author feels about his own work.  Whenever I see a literary work on the Young Writers Society with a shoddy title, I know the author does not care about the work he posted.  Plus, if you can’t bother to write a proper title – something that only takes a minute – then what does that say about the likely quality of the work?

And that is why the title is so important: it’s the first indicator to the reader of how the author feels about his work and about the quality of the work.  That indicator is extremely important as it lets the reader know whether or not to spend the time necessary to read and review the work in question (which is why YWS doesn’t actively enforce rules concerning titles of works).  So if you’re not spending time on your title, you may want to rethink your priorities.

To see the full-size image, simply click on it.

Smashing Magazine Backgrounds

The next few backgrounds come from Smashing Magazine.  Clicking on the image will take you to a long list of backgrounds; so just scroll down until you find the one you like.

So instead at some point, someone decided that from now on, we must write ‘he/she’ or ‘his/her’.  This idiosyncratic style of writing quickly caught on and became a grammatical convention.  But, it’s time to stop this.

In writing, we should strive to remove as many unnecessary words as possible (and not a word more).  This is especially true in academic writing (even though a great many academics have missed the memo…), but it’s also true in creative writing.  Using five words when just one word will do is nowadays regarded as absurd.

And this is seen very clearly with cases of ‘he/she’.  So instead of using two words when just one will do, just go with your gender.  If you’re a guy, use ‘he’.  If you’re a lady, use ‘she’.  Or, do the opposite.  It doesn’t matter which gender you go with as long as you’re consistent throughout the piece you’re writing.

But lets stop the he/she stuff.  It’s unnecessary, breaks the flow of whatever you’re writing, and is becoming absurd.

This stage in the idea development process is known as the creativity plateau.  It starts off with generating an idea, being really excited about the idea, then having to do the mundane stuff.  Once we enter that later plateau for which creativity isn’t always necessary, we get bored and move on to our next great idea.  As a result, you may have scores of unfinished ideas.

Getting through the creativity plateau can be difficult because it means toughing it out.  You have to grit your teeth and pull through it so that you can bring your idea to the completion it deserves.  But how do you do that?  Here are five tips I’ve come up with:

1. Set aside at least an hour a day to work on your idea.

We are creatures of habit, and so once you get into the habit of doing something at the same time every day, your chances of completing that task rise substantially.

2. Take it slow at first.

Getting a new idea can be like a sugar high, but you need to calm down and take it slow.  If you spend all that creative energy in the first few days, then it’s going to be your loss.  Work diligently and slowly.

3. Set action goals for yourself.

An action goal is a task that begins with a verb.  Every day, come up with two action goals to accomplish on your idea.  For a novel, it could be something like “Write 500 words,” or “Draw a sketch of the main character.”  Once you’re done, you can cross out your action goal giving you a sense of accomplishment.

4. Minimize security blanket tasks.

A security blanket task is something you do because it makes you feel better and there’s no particular end goal.  It could be watching videos on Youtube, reading the news, or browsing the YWS forums.  What you want to do is set up a time of day when you could do this kind of stuff to your heart’s content, then avoid them throughout the rest of the day.

5. Exercise

Try to do something outside every day.  This could mean anything from going on a 20 mile bike ride to walking the dog for 15 minutes.  The point is to get outside and get the heart pumping.  Doing so improves the flow of oxygen to your brain, releases endorphins, and increases your creativity.

So, hopefully this all helps.  In the comments, why don’t you leave your favorite way to get through the creativity plateau?

I felt I was being too critical, so I ended up not reviewing anything. But it got me thinking: what are some of the things in posts that YWS members feel deter them from reviewing? I posed this question to chat and got some interesting answers in response:

Silented1:  Long stories, lots of words, and a “Please Review”.

Most members here can tell you that if you keep your average post length at 1000 words (or less!) you’re likely to get more reviews. That’s because people generally tend to skim over a story at first glance and take it in as a whole. A large amount of words or a long page seems like a chore to read through, unless you’ve got an attention-grabbing first line that holds us hostage until the end.  If not, do us a favor and keep it short by posting your stories in parts.

People will review what they want.  Attaching a “Please Review” to the title, or prefacing it with such phrase will only make people not review. It’s the reverse psychology ordeal going there.

Rosey Unicorn: “Ignore all spelling and grammar mistakes”.

Seriously, if you forgot to revise, it’s best to put posting off until you do so. Or if you made spelling and grammar mistakes, it’s probably better to let them be pointed out in case you happen to skip over them in your own revisions. If a reviewer isn’t deterred by being told to ignore or spelling and grammar mistakes, such a comment usually fuels them to review your story, flames and all, with the sole target of pointing out spelling and grammar errors.

“Another thing that bugs me to no end,” Rosey says, “is when they [writers] give a summary at the beginning.”

Yes, writers. Please. It’s annoying. Imagine going into a movie theater and seeing a five-minute clip at the beginning of the movie that summarizes everything that’s about to happen. Would you sit for the next two hours?

Yeah, didn’t think so. Readers thrive on suspense, so you should try to keep as much of it alive as you can.

ScarlettFire: Long paragraphs and lack of spacing.

Bombarding your audience with a long paragraph will not do much good. Correction: Bombarding your audience with long paragraphs won’t do them any good.  Part of writing is in the spacing—paragraph breaks let you know when a new speaker starts talking or a new event is about to take place. Cramming everything together into one big mosh pit is tedious for us to read through because we have to decipher where you wanted to break.

Aet Linding: [I don’t like it] When work is unreadable.  If I have to take some effort to figure out how to read it, I’m not going to bother.

“If you’re bad with grammar, that’s okay,” Aet says. But, if you understand the rules of it and choose not to use it for either stylistic effect or just a lapse of laziness on your part, remind yourself that a reviewer won’t feel compelled to dedicate as much time to your piece. Punctuation, grammar, line breaks and syntax were all created for a reason.

DON’T preface your work with explanations.

No one cares if the idea is morbid and you usually don’t think about morbid things. If the idea is good, then we’ll want to read it, but saying that you generally don’t do this or don’t do that makes us feel like we can’t praise an aspect as much as we’d like to. And for the record, no one cares if you wrote it in five minutes, either. We just hope you ran a spell check.

In a story, words are what show emotion. Not emoticons.

When the main character dies, I’d really like to see in vivid description that her mother becomes so distraught that her emotion could reach out and affect how I feel about the character’s death. I really don’t want to see a yellow ball with a sideways left parentheses sign streaming blue tears from its eyes.

In favor or opposition of any of these? Leave a comment telling why, and don’t forget to include your biggest deterrent from reviewing a literary work.

Charles Stross, the critically acclaimed science-fiction author of such books as Singularity Sky (great series) and Halting State, announced today in his blog that he will no longer be writing science-fiction.

We’ve been taking a hard look at the market realities; things have been particularly grim in SF/F publishing ever since November 2008, and it has become clear that in light of a downward spiral of diminishing sales things can’t go on as before. The poor market conditions (Tim Holman of Little, Brown says the British publishing industry as a whole shipped 1% fewer books in 2009) are resulting in downward pressure on new book advances: as an agent of my acquaintance put it, with respect to advances, “five grand is the new twenty grand”.

Obviously, science-fiction publishing isn’t what it used to be.  Thirty years ago, if you put a rocket on the cover, then you were guaranteed an audience of tens of thousands as geeks rushed to buy it.  These days, science-fiction’s biggest competitor isn’t other books or even movies: it’s video games.  That leads to some unfortunate market realities.  So as they say, adapt or die.  It looks like Stross has chosen the former:

Late last year my agent and I conducted an exhaustive review of my skill-set and background, to the extent of commissioning a focus group to look into my work to date and suggest new directions.

Stross then goes on to describe his new novel:

Harlequin Romance will publish my first paranormal romance, “Unicorn Schoolâ„¢: The Sparkling”, in Q1/2012. US:TS is the first book of the projected series, and introduces Avril Poisson, who moves with her family from Phoenix, Arizona, to Forks, Washington with her divorced father, and finds her life in danger when she falls in love with a Sparkly Unicornâ„¢ called Bob. Stalked by and in fear of a mysterious horse-mutilator, Avril must practice her dressage skills with Bob and qualify her steed for a scholarship to the elite Unicorn Schoolâ„¢, where he will be safe to grow (and sparkle) without fear of the vampires who infest the senior’s common room. In the second book, “Unicorn Schoolâ„¢: The Exsanguination” Bob and Avril must stalk a Vampire Unicornâ„¢ who is draining her fellow pupils of the will to live back to the rocky outcrop where he lives. In book three, “Unicorn Schoolâ„¢: The Deflowering”, Bob and Avril confront their most ghastly foe yet, a moustache-twirling villain who is intent on seducing all the pupils (as we all know, unicorn/human relationships are only possible if the human party is a virgin) in order to sell their heart-broken steeds to evil French multinational meat conglomerate Hachette. In book four, “Unicorn Schoolâ„¢: The Big Chill” the swindle that is global warming is exposed and, as glaciers pounce on the Louisiana Bayou, Avril and Bob are hunted by monstrous black-and-white swimming birds. And in book five, “Unicorn Schoolâ„¢ Forever”, our young lovers are going to get married — but not if the evil, bigoted anti-unicorn Sheriff Osama gets his anti-unicorn-marriage by-law passed first!

What do you think?  Do you find it encouraging, as I do, that Stross will continue to tackle hard-breaking current events in literary form, or do you find this as a Stephanie Meyer led decline in literary obsolescence?

Click Here to Read Charlie Stross’ Blog