I love my writing group. A lot of us have been in the group for over 10 years, by this point, which means we know each other’s writing well—and that’s usually a good thing. Knowing the perspective each person is coming from helps to interpret their comments and put them in context, which makes it easier to fix the issues they spot without losing my voice. Their comments are also more likely to have that voice in mind since they’re so familiar with it.
That said, though, there are times that feedback from my workshop group might not be the most productive thing for the piece I’m working on. Sometimes it’s helpful to see how a story is reading to people who don’t know my writing, like when I’m playing in one of my established sandboxes and want to verify that it makes sense as a stand-alone, or if I’ve already workshopped the piece with the group and need a fresh perspective on how it reads after incorporating their suggestions.
Whether you don’t have a regular workshop group, or are looking for supplemental sources of creative critique outside your usual circles, here are some places you can get feedback on fiction without leaving the comfort of your house.
Like I imagine is the case for many people right now, the Olympics has become my default “on in the background” content since it started. Not because I’m particularly passionate about any of the sports involved—more the opposite, in fact. There’s something very intriguing and entertaining about watching sports I normally don’t think about, or seeing things I’m only familiar with from family picnics being played at an exceptionally high level.
Something else the Olympics makes very clear: sports are omnipresent in just about every culture of the world. This has likely been true for thousands of years. From the original Olympics held in ancient Greece to the ball game of the Aztec and Maya, just about every culture we know about had some kind of sport.
Despite this, I think it’s safe to say that sports are among the most neglected aspects of society in creative writing. You can definitely find examples of sports in fiction and poetry, but not nearly to the same degree as other cultural touchstones like food, music, religion, or fashion.
We’re in the middle of an open call for After Happy Hour, which means I’ve been reading a lot of submissions lately. The variety of stories that get submitted to us always makes it an adventure to read the slush, and it’s usually one I enjoy. For the most part, the stories people send us are fun to read. A lot of the things we reject are good stories at their core that either just don’t fit the aesthetic of the journal—or, more often, that are a draft or two shy of being completely finished.
I think every writer has sent out stories too early at some point. I’ve definitely been guilty of it—I’ll finish a round of edits, think the story’s finally done, and send it off. Then I reread the story after the rejections come in and realize I’m glad those editors said no, because the piece definitely isn’t as good as it could be.
When I’m reading submissions for After Happy Hour, I try not to make any judgments about the writer. We read things anonymously for a reason. We don’t want anything to sway our decisions except the work itself.
That said, I am still human, and humans are adept at noticing patterns. There are some things writers do that give me the impression they haven’t been writing fiction for very long. Usually, when I see their bio after we’ve made our decision on the piece, I find that I’m right.
I’ve been working on a few new projects lately, including many short stories for a linked collection as well as two independent novellas (or what I think will be novellas, which is maybe a discussion for a different post) and that means coming up with lots of character names. This is something of a problem for me because I’m historically quite bad at it.
Character names are one of those details that feel incredibly loaded and important and can utterly derail me from making progress on a new draft, no matter how much I tell myself I can always go back and change them later. Hell, even real humans have that option down the line, and it’s much more complicated to alter a real-world personal identity than to simply Find/Replace in a Word document.
