Where have you been, you wandering gobdaw?

Not sure if gobdaw is a real word. Seem to remember it from Kilcock in the seventies.

I've been submerged in critique-website land for the last while. I've all but given up on Youwriteon.com
The mechanics of the site are good but the quality of the reviews is so hit and miss that. after a while, I wasn't able to discern good advice from bad. This may be down to the fact that there are not a huge number of active users, certainly not enough to have a decent clump of reviewers from your own genre.
Authonomy was an interesting experiment. Turns out it is mostly fun but does little to improve one'e writing as it is not set-up to provide good, qualified critique. I had hundreds of one-line critiques that varied from 'perfect' to 'bin it' - neither very helpful. The site is a time-suck too, taking every spare hour to keep up with the race to the editors table( even though the forums are great craic). So I ditched that.
I'm now a new member of litopia.com, where you cannot become a working member until you have posted 250 comments on the forum. After that you ascend, freemason-like, to the next echelon and I have no idea what will happen there(I have bought my apron though).

I'll keep you updated and maybe do a general piece on all the critiquing sites at a later date.

I've continued to work on my children's stories "The Flesh-eating Diplomat from Outer Space" etc but I am losing the will to live with these. I've gone from euphora to deep depression looking at them - so I've stopped looing at them.

I will have to polish them up, though, as I'm travelling to the York Writers' Festival in April and I need something for the one-to-ones with agents that happen there.

Later
M.

My third review - 3 o'clock and all's well

"I really enjoyed reading this, Mark, even though I am the "wrong" side of 70! I have grandchildren in the age-group you are writing for and I think they would love it, especially the boys.

Yes, you hit exactly the right note for your target readership and this is not as easy as one may think. I have read an awful lot of YWO chapters (and I do mean awful!) ostensibly meant for children, which are hopelessly wide of the mark. I think you have just the right combination of excitement and humour here.

Just two teeny-weeny nitpicks: I'd be inclined not to use kakapoop and galoop in the same sentence - could you change one of them just a bit? And do you really need to repeat "like a cat on fire" when they shoot out into space? But, these are really tiny points in an excellent story"

So far my story has been reviewed by 3 people and it seems to be surviving the experience. Not one person has said - 'you are a gimp, Lloyd, a gimp of the highest order.' or 'Your words grate on my consciousness like nail on a blackboard' or, worse still 'well, it was OK, I suppose.'

I need 8 reviews to get a chance at cracking the top 10 and if I manage that I will get a review from a publisher or the janitor at a publishing house - depending on how much moolah the site owners are actually coughing up.

*****

Voice is an interesting topic. I want to go to a workshop that focuses entirely on voice. I worry that my voice isn't authentic. I tend to try to write something in a particular style and it is only occasionally that I manage to write in a way that is readily identifiable as my own voice. When I'm writing I have to avoid reading as the style and ideas of what I am reading will leach into my script.

Hmm...any voice coaches out there?

By the way, if you are reading this it would be rude not to say hello.

Writers' Group

Met up with Bob today and we discussed the idea of a writers' group which meets once a month but which has a strong emphasis on providing a resource for useful critique. Perhaps the group's members could submit work to the group by email and the resulting critique reports could be returned by email or in a one to one meeting.
Of course that could mean that the group would get together once a month to get drunk and then in the intervening period insult each other by email - regardless, I would welcome it.

We talked about what it takes to raise a writer's game. A good peer group was one aspect but another was practical advice from the industry. Bob was at a workshop in the Irish Writers Centre called Pathways to Publication, where practical advice was doled out by published writers, their agents and their publishers. Sounds like a concept that the Limerick Writers' Centre should borrow.

What do you think?

LWC - A Writers Journal

A Writer’s Journey -
Writing is a lonely journey so would you mind walking with me a while?

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Even as I look at the title of this series I have to ask myself – Am I a writer? I have been asking myself that for years. If ever I refer to myself as a poet or a writer I do so with very little conviction and a sneaking belief that the writing police will arrest me in my sleep for impersonating a writer. I’ll be placed in a room where real writers will point at me and laugh.
When I was in my early teens I knew that I was going to be a writer. It was abundantly clear to me then that there was nothing else that I could do; nothing else worth doing. I wrote for kicks. Just a matter of time…putting in the years until I would leave home and buy that brown corduroy jacket and pipe and get down to the business of writing for a living.
When I was in college I still I knew that I was going to be a writer and I slept through many lectures having stayed up all night to work on a short story or the beginning of failed novel. In the future, I knew that I was going to live on a Caribbean island, drink copious amounts of gin and rum, get into fights with prostitutes and travel the world writing in my underpants by candlelight about dark and humorous characters that fought injustice and their own inner demons.
Somewhere between then and now I lost my way…But I’m back, I’m motivated and for the first time in a decade I’m actually beginning to believe that I am a writer. I’ve had a few poems published and if I’m not careful I might actually put together a collection some day soon. I’ve written two picture books and three children’s novels. I’ve three other children’s novels in varying states of construction. I’m submitting to agents and publishers for the first time in ten years. I’m not saying that I am a good writer but surely that sort of output and activity alone must allow me to say that I am indeed some class of a writer? Well, funnily enough, I cannot bring myself to add ‘writer’ to my list of occupations on Facebook just yet. And that is the acid test. So when will I? When I walk into a shop and pay €10 for my own book.

Over the next few weeks and months I’d like you to accompany me on this journey but not in silence. Speak up. If you’ve got published or got an agent then tell me and tell me all the hows and whys and I’ll share it(anonymously if you like) with the group.
If you haven’t got published then tell me your hopes and fears, your anguish and your anger and you’ll feel much better for it.
If you are sitting in your underpants right now wondering why you cannot write then put some trousers on and let me know.
In return, I will bare my soul and the contents of my rejection letters.

To contact me email: Mark at Bluebox dot ie

Tidbits of advice:
Buy or steal Writers and Artists Yearbook
Go to the White House Poets on a Wednesday night
Go to the ‘On The Nail’ readings in The Locke Bar every month.
Keep your eyes peeled for workshops at The Limerick Writers’ Centre (especially the Oisin McGann one!)