I’ve been working on the jewelry, which got pretty much finished up today. We’ll be giving away 30-35 of those at the party, plus books, stickers, CDs, and handmade journals.
Here’s a bunch of the pieces laid out: Here's most, but not all of the pieces. There's still about twenty to be done at this point.
And here’s closeups of some of the same image. One thing is for sure — each of these is unique!
The various jewelry accoutrements came from the Redmond Ben Franklin's. This early batch has some blotchiness, which we learned to avoid in subsequent batches by laminating the paper onto the tile or into the finding before resin was applied.
I’m working on a piece for the SFWA Blog about promotional giveaways. What are the best — and worst — ones you’ve seen? What resources would you recommend to people? The stickers are the interior art, done in a nice size that’s big enough not to lose but small enough to be able to use in a number of places.
These are waiting to get filled with resin. They'll take a few days to cure, but when ready will look like glass, and all the roughness here, created by brush marks in the mod podge, will be imperceptible.
Want access to a lively community of writers and readers, free writing classes, co-working sessions, special speakers, weekly writing games, random pictures and MORE for as little as $2? Check out Cat’s Patreon campaign.
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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How to Critique: Best Practices for Workshopping
If you're interested in getting your stories workshopped, click on this picture in order to find out more about My Writing Fantasy & Science Fiction Stories online class. There's also an Advanced Workshop, as well as classes focusing on individual aspects of writing, like description, characters, and fleshing out stories.Both my Writing F&SF Stories and Advanced workshops offer students a chance to critique and be critiqued. To my mind, the latter is actually more useful, because being forced to articulate one’s position on an aspect of writing can be enlightening and instructive. With that in mind, here’s some best practices for such workshops.
Overall:
Start with what works. Let the writer know what you see as the story’s strengths and how they might capitalize on them.
What keeps you from connecting with the story? What don’t you understand? Sometimes the most useful thing you can give someone is a brief synopsis of what you think is going on in the story, because it may not match their intent.
Critique big ticket items, not little nitpicks.
It’s more important to point out what’s broken than to make suggestions how to fix it, because that fix will differ radically from writer to writer.
How do the beginning and ending work together to create a satisfying story? Is the story that’s provided the one the one promised in the beginning? Is the ending set up in a satisfying way? Is it the result of character actions?
What’s missing? What don’t you understand?
What seems extraneous, unneeded or distracting?
What’s the pacing like? Where does the story drag and where does it skip too quickly through details?
Where are the info-dumps and how can that information be spread out?
How well does the title work? If not well, what possible better titles can be drawn from the story?
Characters:
Are the characters likeable?
Are the characters acting or reacting?
Does the character have a point of identification with the reader, such as a problem, situation or want that both of them hold?
Where can we go deeper into the character’s head? Does the reader know what the character wants? Where don’t we understand what the character is doing?
Are there too many characters? Can any be combined?
Is the dialogue interesting and informative of character?
Is the point of view consistent?
World:
Is the world clear? Does the reader know where they are?
Does it feel generic? (Is it?) How can it be made more specific and evocative?
Does it make sense?
How important is the science of it? Are the facts right?
Prefer to opt for weekly interaction, advice, opportunities to ask questions, and access to the Chez Rambo Discord community and critique group? Check out Cat’s Patreon. Or sample her writing here.
As I said in class, no one knows yet what will happen with Google+, but it’s off to a very strong start, and the responsiveness of the Google team to feedback and suggestions has been remarkable. For those of us already using Google products like Gmail, Google docs, and Google Analytics, it’s looking pretty promising. Here’s links mentioned in class along with some other links to useful Google+ information.
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