tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1695280310697378421.post6966879705774808818..comments2024-03-25T02:15:02.505-07:00Comments on Nancy's Blog: How Many Words?adminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11442349453021015062noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1695280310697378421.post-1215985860023112742008-04-10T15:24:00.000-07:002008-04-10T15:24:00.000-07:00Suppose we leave aside stories written in childhoo...Suppose we leave aside stories written in childhood. My first story, co-authored with my brother Dennis, was a bedtime story my father had told us - which turned out to be Damon Knight's "To Serve Man." I regard this as presently unsellable. <BR/><BR/>I picked up some rejection slips in high school for stories I don't even remember. Somewhere along the line, I wrote a story for serious and sent it to Campbell at ANALOG. He rejected it with a two-page letter that ripped it to shreds. What I did not know about critiques was that a) he wouldn't have bothered but that he saw some possibility in the story; and b) he wanted me to put the shreds back together in a more interesting way. <BR/><BR/>Years later, I found the story and read it, and it really s*cked. Big time. So I rewrote it and sent it to Ben Bova. He rejected it, too. <BR/><BR/>Then, even years later, I had sold a different story to Charlie Ryan at GALILEO, which promptly expired. (My brothers said from the desperation of having to buy my story.) But I did then resell that story to Stan Schmidt at ANALOG, and I thought maybe I could fool him a second time. So I dug up that First Story. And it still s*cked, only medium time. So I rewrote it again, and this time Stan bought it, my second sale. And a good thing, too, as ANALOG has not had a new editor since then. <BR/><BR/>So, in a way, I did sell the first story I seriously wrote. Only not right away. And in between I wrote an entire historical novel that raised s*ckiness to black hole levels. So, less than half a million words, but more than a couple ten thousand.TheOFloinnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14756711106266484327noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1695280310697378421.post-23254506949343189982008-04-10T10:23:00.000-07:002008-04-10T10:23:00.000-07:00I love this idea of having a practice critique ses...I love this idea of having a practice critique session. When I first started writing, I wasted a lot of time writing critiques that didn't really approach the text with an eye for what the author was trying to accomplish. My biggest problem was that I didn't know how to separate "me" the writer from "me" the critiquer. <BR/><BR/>Once I figured out how to write helpful critiques, I found that I began improving as a writer. Funny how that works.Erin Underwoodhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13225161280626421337noreply@blogger.com