Another request: WORK in CRITIQUES; BLOGS in BLOGS please?
May I give a gentle reminder - nay - a huge plea - to people NOT to
put their work up on the BLOG section? I can't find even
yesterday's blogs without going down screens and screens of poems
and chapters from cloudies wanting advice/critique. Please put
these in the critiques or groups section, you will get a greater
response there. If there are a group of kind folks who read for
each other, please start a group and invite people - it keeps all
your chapters together for your future reference and keeps WIPs
seperate.
If nobody comments for a couple of days then perhaps put a one liner on your wall or the blog with the title and request for readers? Thank you. :) :) :)
If nobody comments for a couple of days then perhaps put a one liner on your wall or the blog with the title and request for readers? Thank you. :) :) :)
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25 Comments
They are a waste of time, space and rations.
Blogs are not posts of work for critiques. Whatever we think they are, that's certainly something they aren't.
Someone replied on this topic before that louders put there fiction on blogs for us to read so perhaps another section is needed for writings that just wanna be read.
A possible suggestion to encourage Forums, as for some reason Forum entries and responses do not come up on my notifications, is this a usual thing or am I just being dumb with my settings? If this is a normal thing then perhaps if this was changed it would be more encouraging.
You can either tick 'Watch topic' at the top of the thread, or 'notify me' at the bottom near the reply box if you do reply. It will also tell you if you're already 'watching' down at the bottom of the thread - and you can change that at any time, by clicking on, er, 'change this'.
Also, on the list of forum topics, a star next to the topic indicates that you are already 'watching' it - i.e. you will be notified when anyone else posts.
If you are looking for a critique, then of course the forum is the place. But who can fault the proud parent of a potential work of art wantign to show off?
I would suggest for those who wish to headline their work to just post an excerpt of a few paragraphs and then a link to it.
That would allow the purists to maintain the illusion of control and allow the budding Barbara Cartlands here our chance for glory.
I write about 7-10 shorts per week, more if I had time and sold Her-indoors, and I could be much more mea culpa on this but I try to only inflict one per week or so. I bin most of them. Wish I had saved them now as some were almost readable.
Balance is an easy word to throw out but it is much more difficult to achieve. I never have.
And the second thing - by clicking on 'watch topic', you get notified of any further postings on any forum thread - which isn't the case with blogs. It's a bit of a pain with blogs if you're interested in the discussion, as they can be awkward to find later to see if anyone else has commented - especially if you've been on holiday for a week.
And the third thing of the two things: when I first joined (at the beginning), I critted every single thing on the forum, whether I liked it or not; and in great depth. It took hours and hours and days and days and weeks and weeks.
Two things happened:
I really honed my critical faculties - which seeped back into my own writing very quickly; if I saw someone do something irritating over and over again, it would sometimes dawn on my that I did exactly the same thing but I hadn't realised it. And vice versa - if I saw something done really effectively, I'd ponder how they'd achieved it and so learnt.
The second thing that happened was that by casting my critting net widely, I developed my own little critting circle of people whose writing I liked and who appeared to like mine and so we took it off-Cloud and continue to crit each others' work privately to this day. They have become real friends too and we continue to support each other.
I've noticed, as time goes by, that other critting circles develop naturally - a cluster of people who review each others' work and I believe many of them later go off-Cloud as well. This all strikes me as very healthy and organic.
But the moral of the story is that if you give, you shall receive.
I rarely do a public crit anymore because I'm happy with my own writing circle; but getting involved in crits in the first place, was one of the best things I ever did to move my own writing journey along; an investment that's paid great dividends and I'm really glad I did it.
I don't think I knew that bit was there - how unobservant am I? Only been using this forum for about two and a half years....!
Skylark: Lol you’re as bad as me, nice to know I’m not the only one XD
Tenacity - it's a tricky balance. Posting lengthy pieces of work sometimes puts people off reading but if you know there are some people who are interested in your writing, then there's no reason why you can't start a group to post longer sections of work. Several people have done that and it works for them. It's not needy as long as you are willing to crit for the members of your group should they post anything themselves. As CW said above, it's just a matter of give and take.
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