I don't enjoy listening to nineteen people say This didn't work for me or I couldn't understand what you were doing and other comments that really drive home that I missed the mark on this one. But I do need to KNOW this so I can take the lessons learned and apply them elsewhere.
I just have to keep telling myself over and over again: It's the story being critiqued, not me. It's the story. It's the story. Failed stories do not make me a bad writer. Failures are learning experiences. I will not allow this to affect me like I've allowed the last few weeks.
I really, really wish I hadn't forced myself to go off sugar. I could use some sugar comfort about now. Cinnamon balls and cinnamon disks would go a long way toward taking the agnst out of this process. OTOH, I don't want another one of those headaches.
Exhaustion has set in. I have eighteen completed stories if you count the 700 word one. I've lost count of the false starts. Suffice to say it's substantial. And then there's the exercises I've done when I just can't accomplish any real writing. And critiquing. Lots of critiquing. I'd laid down to critique a story when I fell asleep last night. I need to find where the manuscript went after I fell asleep on it.
It's been a full four weeks and now we're heading into week five. I need to find a story idea that flies and the suicide story just doesn't want to move forward right now. I think I'll do better this afternoon but I just don't know. Every time I think the well has gone dry, I've managed to write another story after all. But I keep wondering how much longer I can keep up the pace. It's important to me to prove to myself that I can write under pressure and write even when I don't know what to write about. In real life, we don't have the luxury of waiting for inspiration. For me, inspiration usually hits when I'm knee-deep in a different story.
Critiquing began with the INSTRUCTORS saying, I think I read a different story. They had, in fact, and thus I became the first sacrifical lamb rather than the second. The story had mixed reactions, as expected. The dialect mostly worked but the overall concensus is that the story didn't. There were various ways to take it and the fictional character was much better drawn and understood than the real characters.
Maureen said that from 8am Tuesday until 8am Wednesday, we are to not write. There will be no policing and if someone has a sudden breakthrough, that's their concern. But take a break. I have explicitly been told that when the break is over, revise rather than write. Maureen is going to take me through the methods of revision as I am one who has said repeatedly that I have major difficulties with revision. We will take the children as pets story and go step-by-step through how to approach a revision. I need to focus upon my weak areas and revision is one hell of a weak area for me.
After lunch, there was a session for anyone who wanted to attend in which Maureen gave her opinions about the four areas of focus within stories and how you could move up to the next level to become a better writer by focusing upon these. We're getting copies of her notes.
Tonight, I'm going to critique and then I'm going to write as much as possible before 8am arrives and the 24-hour imposed restriction arrives. I'm probably going shopping then.
As of 1600 hours, I am 600 words into a story set in Heaven (a space colony) with two very short scenes setting up the world and the pov character. It's many years after the holocaust and Earth is going through an ice age.