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I've been told that keeping a journal helps a writer, so why not keep it in public? |
| Good morning, friends. Friday again, and I'm back with more of my hopefully amusing musings. I'm toying with 3.5 Verdana as opposed to 4.0 Arial. What do you guys think? I'm now into my second month here, and I'm learning things about myself, a process that I suspect will continue for some time yet. For example, I've learned that for all my soapbox preaching about loving to do reviews, I prefer 'em on the easy side. Yup. I'm leaning toward the short story and the simple poem, one with a well-delivered bite, that maybe needs a few comments, but not a 5-page laundry list of corrections. Guess I'm lazier than I first thought. More likely, though, it's that I have a host of things I need to divide my time among, and taking two or more hours to produce a review five days a week is excessive. May happen once in a while, but don't sit by the keyboard waiting for it. Here's an example of one I found this week: "Underwater Silence"  . A magnificent Hitchcockian story that needed a little polish, and I can only hope the recipient enjoyed my review as much as I enjoyed writing it.I like to find stories that are pretty good right out of the gate, and that has less to do with laziness than who I am. Some people aren't cut out to be writers, and it's obvious when you read a story if its author is one of them. But I'm not here to stomp on people's dreams. I could never imagine myself saying, "You can't write. Why don't you do yourself a favor and stop wasting ink?" I don't have the credentials to tell anyone that anyway. I'm no great writer, I'm no renowned professor of English. I'm a guy who's written a few stories and maybe learned a trick or two that I can pass along, but I doubt that I will ever give a rating lower than three stars, and very few of those. Incidentally, I've worked through the Please Review list, and I have to say that it was pretty disappointing. About half of the requestors haven't logged in to the site in weeks or even months. Of the half that are left, half of them are asking for long-term reviews of ongoing novels, have posted poems that fly so far over my head that they're safe from anti-aircraft missiles, or items that don't meet those criteria above. Some few are even marked Private. Why would you ask for a review and then set the item so that it can't be read? No matter. I'll still check out items that appear on the list, but I'm now taking most of my material from the Read a Newbie page. Folks love the welcome wagon, right? Anyway, that's 30 for this week. Everybody keep your minds in the worlds of wonder and your fingers on the keyboards, and have a wonderful journey to wherever the muse takes you. Stay Inspired! Taylor...  |
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