Reviews, Recipes, and Random Slices of Life

That seems to be all that people are telling me about my writing lately. They want more. They want it bigger and more expanded. They want to spend more time in my worlds. They want to ride beside my characters a little longer. In some ways, this is a good thing. They liked it! In some ways, it is a pain in my ass.

You see, there are two kinds of writers in this world. There are the taker-outers and the putter-inners. I am a taker-outer. When I'm editing a story I wrote, I'm not adding things. I'm getting rid of crap that didn't need to be there. I'm yanking out the fluff. I'm ruthlessly killing extraneous characters.

I'm not good at putting more back into the story (I flatter myself that I've become pretty whiz-bang at rewriting beginnings, though). I will stare stupidly at the story for hours, stammering, "But...but...what can I add?"

I had so many damn critiquers saying that they wanted to read more about the characters in "The Unkindness of Ravens." Many of them said I should expand it into a novel (at which suggestion I screamed and cowered in the corner).

My face-to-face writing group (just starting up, looking for members in the Minneapolis area) workshopped a non-genre short story of mine called "Out of Focus." One of the main comments? They wanted to be able to savor things unfolding a bit more. Their suggestions would have it expanding another fifty percent.

Then, today, I got a sort-of rejection that read as follows:
We really enjoyed your story, X. However, it was a little too short. If you have a longer, more developed version of the story, or would like to add a little to it, we would encourage you to resubmit it!

Narf.

Angel?



( Or Demon? )