but it's a tad overwritten in spots

This is my worst habit. I get all Anne Rice and can describe a lamp for 14 pages.

This is my worst habit. I get all Anne Rice and can describe a lamp for 14 pages.

Knowing a bad habit is half the battle, because then you know what to look for on rewrite.

Signed,
Rough Drafts Never Include Description of Anything Other than People and Occasionally Horses, No Matter How Opulent or Exotic the Setting May Be

This:

I feel like Lily Tomlin’s Edith Ann being swallowed by that really big rocking chair.

is a perfect line, because it's a perfect visual.

With Susan on a few places of it being, not so much overwritten as obscurely overwritten. It took me a second to get around and through "We agreed that the show was one big nocturnal emission on sheets of milquetoast." It's a fun sentence, but it stopped me cold: too much information, literally, to have to process, and in too personal a way of phrasing for it to have cut through my cranium on the first read.

When the descriptions of the physical surroundings are as crisp and clean as, say, that entire first paragraph, anything that runs too far in the other direction ends up reading as muddled. I'd stick with really straightforward in the introductory pieces, personally, because a) using them sparsely adds to the punchiness when you actually do use them, and b) an introductory or framing bit should always be clean. (Um, that's clean as in clear, not clean as in non-porny...)

Also with Susan on "accommodation". And with her, as well, on the sense that it's headed where I think you want it to be.

Noted. I think I'm going to write furiously through, get the whole story out, put it aside, write the next thing, then pull this one back out of file.

There's places where I've sort of mentally noted that I need to be cleaner, and I'm sure there's a lot I've missed. I'm more concerned about keeping the car on the road, this is such a monstrous, windy piece.

I think I love the writing-furiously thing. Because hell, if it's there? Pruning and/or retrofit, not such a big thing, or rather, not such a daunting thing. And all kinds of willing betas out here.

Asleep on feet, and keeling. And later today, Teppy posts a new theme/drabble/topic thing.

Allyson, agreeing with the tightening and making clearer. Without losing that breathless impetus the piece has, the sense of excitement about being on set. And my inner line-editor is screaming that "wispy" has no 'h'.

Allyson, I should be writing an essay and not skimming here at all, but I really wish I could read the rest of that. It may be that it could be tighter, but I didn't notice that; it really grabbed me, right from "fireworks and sawdust".

Allyson, although a re-read does make me think that things could be tighter, the first draft sucked me right in and made me want to read more.

That said, I loved the Tor editor so much I was half tempted to turn James into a vampire and Jack a werewolf on the spot so I could pitch to her.

Coffee. All. Over. Keyboard.

Okay, anyone who wrote a "Drums" drabble and didn't post it to the LJ GWW community, if you want to post it, please do so. Because only 3 people posted "Drums" drabbles. Feel free to post them even after I announce that....

Challenge #25 (Drums) is now closed. Any drabbles on this topic that you just haven't gotten around to posting to LJ, feel free to post; no new drabbles, please.

Challenge #26 is the following: the lies we've* told so often that they've become real in our* minds.

*The "we" and "our" does NOT mean that the drabbles should necessarily be personal experience; it's certainly fine if they ARE, but because of the way the challenge is worded, I just wanted to be crystal clear that this isn't a challenge where you must spill your guts. You can spill your characters' guts instead.

Hey y'all, I was just scanning the writing gigs listings on craigslist, and saw a couple that might be of interest to folks here....

Any cat people willing to write for free? [link]

Susan, check this: [link]

There are also any number of new online zines looking for "edgy" and "hip" for free, FYI.