There's one seasoned writer, who's been publishing short stories off and on for quite some time. He's actually the instructor who runs the community college class our group grew out of. But he attends spottily because of his teaching commitments. Everyone else is at least as much of a newbie as I am, and arguably more so, because I have actually proved I can finish something now.

Then I suspect there may be an element (I know, I'm fixing on the obvious) of not knowing what they're really supposed to be critiquing outside their particular personal taste, in the easy-on-you.

Sometimes, though, the work is just damned good and there isn't much to critique....

Sometimes, though, the work is just damned good and there isn't much to critique....

One likes to hope....

The seasoned writer often tells me how precise my work is. Always makes me feel kind of damned with faint praise, that.

Nothing wrong with precise; it's a damned useful thing to be, unless you're writing something heavily spontaneous and freewheeling.

Well, yeah, but precise is a tool, a style. I'd like to think I'm wielding it in such a way that my readers are amused, touched, moved, what have you.

Speaking of growing, I've finally started outlining for real my "opus" using StoryView. I've been biting at the edges, drabbling little scenes with very little real idea what's going to happen. I'm stronger with character than plot, really. I'm hoping SV will help me put together a skeleton to hang the flesh of the story on.

So, I feel like this is really the official beginning of Kemar. Makes me a bit nervous and excited, and a little butterly-tummy going on. But it's begun in earnest.

Here goes nothin'.

Why do the two have cancel each other out? Malory wrote precise stuff, and I go back to "Le Morte d'Arthur" over and over and over.

Whoo! Go, Astarte!

Drabbles are such very good friends, aren't they? So damned clarifying. They're like a facial for the head.

Why do the two have cancel each other out? Malory wrote precise stuff, and I go back to "Le Morte d'Arthur" over and over and over.

Oh, they don't, not at all. I'm just not sure that this particular reader is seeing anything but precision, you know? However, he and I could hardly have more different writing styles and reading preferences, so as long as he sees some merit in my stuff, that's probably enough.

Oh, crap.

I'm editing the work of one of our two newest writing group members.

It's awful. He dots every i, crosses every t, leaves absolutely nothing to the reader's own choosing, and doesn't introduce the main character until over six pages of redundant description.

Shoot me now.