I was reading my selection of blogs between patients and came across this post by Kristine Katherine Rusch about writing. It addresses a few points, like who are you writing for, and when something is done.

One of the commenters mentioned that he had once mailed Isaac Asimov (a favorite of mine) the question, "When do you know when something is ready to be published?" Asimov's answer, on a postcard, was "When it's published."

I suppose you could take that two ways. One is that getting published is the only validation that your work is any good. Another is that if you send it out and it's published, you know it's done. They seem similar, but differ in the mindset of the writer, I suppose.

Rusch suggests in her piece that writers are too attentive to criticism by other writers as to the quality of the story. Is it good enough? Does it need changes?

I remember being on Delphi back in the '90's, where I helped to run a book site called "The Book and Candle Pub". Some of the participants there were aspiring writers. I remember one guy who named Dale Schwitalla, who went by the handle "Vinnie" online. I'd known Vinnie since our Prodigy days. He's since passed on, getting killed in a motorcycle accident.

Vinnie could write scary stories like no one. He was always positive about my own writing, though he often had some things to say about my use of too passive a voice in some sections. Vinnie should have been published. I think a few of his short stories were picked up by online genre fiction magazines, but in general his works were never seen by anyone.

Vinnie introduced me to a writers' forum (Custom Forum 285 on the old Delphi) where people posted stories in a closed forum and other writers did a line-by-line critique. It seemed to me that no matter what I wrote, every paragraph needed edits, according to the writers in the group. They sort of piled on - if one suggested something, they all agreed.

I think this was in fear of looking like someone who "didn't know good writing". It put me off for years. I got married, and my writing ground to a halt.

Kristine Katherine Rusch says that there is ALWAYS something wrong with every story. If a line-by-line critique is done of any tale, mistakes will be found. Sometimes it's just the way a phrase is turned. What was perfectly clear to the writer is less than clear to THAT reader. At some point, she seems to say, you the writer just have to say, this is MY story and this is the way I want it!

I've been thinking like that for a while now. I'll write MY stories, and I am not going to ask anyone for that line-by-line critique. Because in the end, it's the overall story, not the turn of a phrase in the 17th paragraph, that readers will respond to. It's the characters. They'll either like them - or not, in which case I'll get negative comments and no one will buy/read them.

When did I decide this? Well, it was after I submitted an old story to a site here on Journalscape called Friendly Fiction, and after I put up another story here on my own journal. The comments I got, from people I respected, were that they enjoyed the stories. I decided then that maybe I'd start writing again. And then along came the ability to self-publish for e-readers through Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble and even Apple now. One of these days you'll see a post here saying that my stuff is now available! I hope, at least.

I am sure that everyone sees things in stories that they would have said differently. Good for them. This is the way *I* chose to say it.

PS. I wish that others could read some of Vinnie's stories. I personally think they were that good. Vinnie was hard on himself. He was one of those writers who was always thinking there was something he could do better in his fiction. I loved his stories. I have a bunch of them that I saved from the old days but I don't know what I can do with them. Maybe contact his widow and see if she'd let me publish them? They're winners.

He once wrote a story called "The Butcher" about what else? A serial killer. I wrote one called "The Baker", also about a serial killer, that was not nearly as good as Vinnie's. Then Vinnie wrote a third, and it could have been called "The Candlestick Maker" even though it was titled something else. His stories were both very scary and very original, I thought. Mine...probably not so much.

*****