Hi fellow writers.
Happy New Year!
I set myself the objective for 2018: Finish 'Being/Surviving Fifteen'.
That can mean a number of things; sending it out to agents, self-publishing, or merely printing it out and leaving it on a shelf at home. Most importantly, in 2019, I won't allow myself to edit it anymore.
Does anyone else have any writing objectives/intentions/resolutions for 2018?
Kdot, AlphaOmega has fairly strict deadlines, but at the same time it's good to receive reviews regularly too!
WOOHOO!! CJ, you survived the zombie apocalypse too! 
Sorry to hear how burned out you're feeling - this time of year can feel very overwhelming sometimes with year end objectives to complete, shopping to do, etc.! Hope you'll have a chance to relax over the holidays!
Luckily there are no due dates in this group, and reviews are always appreciated but never mandatory!
Now, I wonder if any of the others survived? 
It's very quiet here lately...Where/how is everyone lately?
Another contest would be great - it's gotten very quiet around here lately and a good contest should liven things up again!
I remember the strongest start competition had loads of really unique entries, while the locked-room one didn't seem to have as many entries, so it would be good to keep it as broad as possible.
If we don't hear from Sol in the next few weeks, we could create our own competition. We could all vote, and the winner wins the prestige of winning (since we won't have material rewards).
Thoughts?
Oops - sorry, I forgot to reply to this in October. No, I decided to submit to agents in the new year and to keep finetuning until then.
My opinion - adding more colours would add more work to reviewing. I'd like to keep it simple.
Jube - I just noticed your remarks above about dialogue tags. The challenge, I find, is finding ways to 'show' that aren't the same generic ones used a hundred times. In a bestseller I recently read, every time somebody received some surprising news 'their eyes widened', and it was used so often it became noticeable. This is the risk, I think, of the emotions thesaurus.
Wow - congrats & best of luck with sales!
I'm really glad you liked that book. I remember reading it for the first time - I'd gotten it as a present for my 14th birthday and read the whole thing in one sitting with The Beach soundtrack playing in the background. I've read it so many times since then and have always found the story to be so immersive that I struggle to put it down.
I have a lot of sympathy for the 2nd Mrs de Winter. She's an assistant to a bullying old woman when Maxim proposes, and because she lives in a time when class is very important, she constantly feels inferior. This isn't helped by Mrs Danvers always finding ways to put her down. Even the fact that she never shares her own name with the reader shows how insignificant she finds herself. Only towards the end does she start to grow in strength and realise that she does deserve Maxim & Manderlay.
I agree that a lot of her decisions are frustrating. For the majority of the book I much prefer the character of Rebecca, who has a stronger presence in the story than the 2nd Mrs.de Winter. But the story isn't really about her - it's more about Rebecca and Maxim.
That's brilliant - congratulations, Sheriff! I love the cover - it's so unique and eye-catching!
Ooh great! I'm due your can turn him into a guy all your readers will fall in love with!
Oh - just one thought - if you are making any edits, you could consider making Patrick's character a bit more masculine. I know the story is about a strong female, which is great, but at points I found Patrick to be too weak to be likable. I was rooting against him towards the end and preferred Helga with Bertie than with Patrick.
that's so exciting you're going to publish this year!! i'm sure a lot of people will enjoy your story.
Where Heaven & Hell Meets is a really, really nice name! I wouldn't change it at all! But you could emphasise it a little more within the story to connect it to Helga's character.
I'm going to be offline for the next few weeks, but if i think of anything else, i'll be sure to let you know as soon as i'm back!
Oh, and thanks to the fantastic advice from this group, I tried yet another rewrite of the first chapter, just in case any of you have some free time this weekend - this time for points. (Thanks, Sheriff Norm for the tips you've already given me on that chapter - all are noted!)
Hi Close Friends,
This morning I have been toying with the idea of submitting 'Being/Surviving Fifteen' to a few agents. I know agents reject almost everything they receive and most people opt for self-publishing, but I wanted to try this first. You know, just in case.
So, I would like to ask you for help, if you don't mind. I wrote a sample cover letter & synopsis, according to the guidelines on most agent's websites, and posted it as a short story in the Close Friends group. I would really appreciate your feedback on what you think of my attempt.
I know you won't get any points for it (it's not possible to post in a closed group like this for points without making it publicly availabe in the premium group too), but if you just tell me how I can repay you (maybe in reviews), I will do my best.
Hope you all have a lovely weekend,
Suin
Oooh that's a good suggestion!!
The main tweak to the points system that I think would be fair would be to award points based on the number of comments left. Right now, you get all of the points for a posted chapter regardless of whether you leave five comments or fifty. The person who leaves fifty deserves more points, in my opinion.
I'm not sure about that. Then the people who go around pointing out stray or rogue commas and calling that a review would be millionaires by the time they finish reading my chapters, for very little effort. People would chase the little issues instead of commenting on bigger issues like plot holes or characters acting uncharacteristically. Maybe at the end of a review, the author can choose to give .25, .5, or 1 additional points depending on the quality of their review. That way, really insightful reviewers would be rewarded.
Your comment was so useful that i didn't write back immediately because i've been mulling over it ever since.
Ok, to start with, here are the thoughts of the person i was about 10 years so when i wrote this draft.
Everything is the same as i've published, up to when Hugh kidnaps her. At first, i had it only through Sarah's POV and had her trapped in an apartment by Hugh with no escape, and with him using the babies as blackmail. She discovers that he's a drug lord, with people all over the world forming a drug chain under his control. She also finds out that he was given a warning for stalking girls as a teenager, and even given a restraining order and an order to seek mental health support for kidnapping a girl who broke up with him. What did all these girls have in common? They look very similar to his mother who ignored him growing up and sent him away to boarding schools alone. Eventually, Jack finds out where Sarah is and rescues her, and they hide in witness protection until Hugh dies from an overdose and they can return home. Jack found her through Alicia, who had become a huge star (kind of Amy Winehouse style of music). Sarah managed to escape when she found out Alicia was doing a concert in a nearby city, and caught Alicia's attention.
When publishing the second draft of this online, i was ten years older and kind of fed up with repetitive cliched stories of women kidnapped by obsessive men, and wanted to change the story by putting it into the POV of the people she'd left behind, but quickly found out this didn't work through the feedback from reviewers.
Now i'm thinking of cutting it back, all the way to where Sarah was sitting on a rock by the red lighthouse, watching the boat sail by, while making her decision about abortion. Since we will finally have a referendum in Ireland next year on abortion (right now, the fetus in Ireland has more rights than the mother, ie. doctors would allow the mother to die in order not to kill an unborn child. also women who's babies won't survive birth have to carry their baby to the full nine months anyway. if at three months, you know your baby won't survive delivery, you still have to carry it another six months. it's awful) anyway, i think the story could have more impact in the light of the changes going on in Ireland right now, and am wondering what i can do to make the story connect with today's political environment. i have some ideas, but don't want to jump right in with rewrites until i have the full picture.
i also don't want to abandon the original version of the story, so i'm between two minds right now & is the reason why i've been kinda quiet on this site lately...
"This morning I dreamt of you."
What's this from? I tried googling with no success...
I'm glad you're enjoying it - compared to the writers of today it is very slow-moving, but i feel that the description is so immersive that you really 'see' Manderlay and really feel the difficulties faced by Mrs. d'Winter and her awe of Rebecca. In the evenings, when she sits with Maxim by the fire with Jasper having tea, you can almost taste it!
Don't forget the resolution in the final installment of the awful & incredibly popular Twilight was a dream sequence too, where Alice showed everybody what would happen if they went into battle. Again, a dream was accepted by a publisher and published. It depends on how it's used.
I only have 470 but found I've enjoyed the site more when I have a bank of points. This way, I don't 'have to' review in order to post, but rather, review work that intrigues me and can review people who will reciprocate.
I wonder, has anyone ever calculated the difference between the amount of chapters they have reviewed to the amount of reviews they have received?
There's a big list of no-no's of publishing that have all been broken by authors who became best sellers. Whether a first chapter/page/paragraph/sentence/word is compelling is the most important point, regardless of rules. I can't read past the first paragraph of Rebecca without finishing the whole book because I find her style of writing so captivating. I read it all in one sitting for the first time at fourteen and it's been one of my favourites ever since - even if it breaks the dream rule!
At the same time, having friends in high places probably helped du maurier - Hitchcock called her his muse! He made movies out of her birds and Jamaica Inn as well as Rebecca!
Sorry, Jube - I somehow didn't notice your previous comments on the public shaming of a new reviewer. Sometimes I think there may be a bit of a culture clash here seeing as I'm in the minority of members of this website who are not from the US. The public naming is just one out of a handful of behaviours that surprise me . (The agitators who 'latch on to passing commenters like a lamprey' is another!). But I thank you for your supportive comments on this topic above.
That's too bad about Cobber! I didn't make a huge effort to review him, so i'm not too affected by him, but I understand your reasoning for removing him. Is there an intention to replace him?
I can't believe someone would say that to you Marilyn! Your writing has been a joy to read!
"Hey, idiot, don't hog the front page with all your shit nobody wants to read anyway. You can only post one per day, and it's not too late to get your money back for the enrollment fee."
What kind of person would say that?!
