... another quick facelift ...
December 29, 1998
6:56 a.m.
As you may be able to tell, I get bored easily. I was just playing around, you see? I had seen someone who used a background gif in a really spiffy manner and figured I could do something like it. So I retooled the front end of the place. What? You noticed there's no gif in the background here? Hmmm... Well, that is how it all started. Honest. Just so you'll know, I don't have a copy of IE 3.x handy for testing purposes, so I've committed the cardinal sin of publishing this without having tested it there first. Please drop me a line if something looks absolutely ugly there, all right?   I am a writer who believes in workshops--assuming they are of the right sort. Yes, I know workshops can tear writers up, especially in the dog-days of waning self-confidence. And they're certainly only as good as their membership--actually I think it's safe to say they are worse than their membership. Writers are generally really crappy at pointing out problems in manuscripts. But I'm still a believer in them. Since the Fishers Five breakup, I've been working regularly with Brian Plante, Amy Sterling Casil, and Lisa. They're a good set of folks, but more important, they're cut above the rest when it comes to workshopping. I spent an hour yesterday reading over a set of comments they had made to "A Distant Wail . . ." This is a story I really like, but it drew some not so good remarks. Okay, let's face the truth. They hated it. I have to admit that for the first time in a very long time, I took these comments personally. They hurt, you see? I loved that story. I wrote it in LA. I knew exactly what I wanted it to be. And they flayed it. I mean, pretty much straight down the line they layed its soul bare--not harshly, mind you. These folks are way too professional for that type of stuff. But surgically, efficiently, they pointed out places where I was hiding the story, places where I forced things into nooks and crannies, places where I let my "Hey this is really cool" mechanisms run on in place of writing the tale at hand. At first, I tried laugh their comments off. They obviously just weren't my audience (have you ever told yourself that?) But my heart heard the ring of truth to their position. So I swallowed hard and just let the thing lay in its blood for awhile. It took a month before I could summon the heart to look at it again. And now I can see their comments were bang on the money. So yesterday I wrote a new draft of the story. It needs another one, of course. (Oh, goody, something to do this morning!) And maybe another one after that. But the story that was in my head is much closer to being on the page because of the comments the group sent me. So my advice to you today is: Find a group whose opinion you trust, then find a way to listen to them.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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