23 September 2010

HI Update Time

Finally finished Draft 10 and sent it away for evaluation.  Now it's in limbo for at least a couple weeks, but at least it out of my hair.

In the meantime, I'm now in the very earliest phases of a new novel.  Right now, I don't even have a draft started.  It's just setting and character notes and, soon, I hope, a plot outline (the idea requires too much political double-crossing for me to just wing it through the first draft, and anyway, I'd like to avoid the structural problems that made HI such a headache).  Unfortunately, I can't give any details at the moment, but hopefully once I have a draft, I can open up a little bit more.  The most I can say is that it's not set in the HI universe and the setting will not surprise people who know me well.

3 comments:

Russ said...

I know this is probably an odd comment, but I guess it's more or less appropriate to put here - how would I go about meeting sci-fi writing groups online, or having an experience sci-fi author read over any stories I've written to see if it's suitable for publication and if publishers would be interested? Thanks!

Matt said...

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you--I've been away from the blog for a while. The short answer is, I don't know how much I can actually help you, but let me tell you what I know.

For the first one, the largest I know of is the Online Writing Workshop for Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror. I actually have an account there, but I haven't used it in a long time. I can't vouch for anything there like community, security, or rights issues. Nevertheless, here's the URL: http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/ . Check it out and see if it's to your liking.

One thing to remember about writing workshops, online or real world, is that the majority of your participating will be critiquing. I dropped OWW SF&F because I couldn't keep up with the critiquing requirements. I admit I get a little overwhelmed by critiquing; I don't want to give someone a half-assed "Oh, it's nice", but a detailed, useful critique takes me forever to write.

If you want published writers to critique your work, and you don't already know one (who's willing to take the time to do it), you're going to have to take it to a conference like Clarion. I can't help you much because I've never attended one and I've never actually had a published sci-fi author read my stuff. I got extremely lucky and had a professional AGENT read my manuscript, but that only happened after I had a finished, polished manuscript ready to go.

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