Bookmarked, Victor. Can we review for you, if you get to vet it? And yay! I hope this goes into print--20 years along, it's being taught as representative of the era--the Catcher in the Rye of the early 21st century.

connie, I can do snippets of conversation. I have a very good one-page story that I've always thought of as complete. But other things, I feel ought to lead somewhere, not just end, unresolved, like bits of conversation overheard in passing.

For my (now dead) novel I had a destination in mind, an outline cast in stone of an ending, and no clear way to get there. Writing it was exhilarating, exhausting, frustrating. The characters would hare off down blind alleys and false trails and I'd have to backtrack. Or sometimes they'd find a wonderful side trip with details I'd never expected or imagined. I "plotted" nothing except certain points that had to happen, somewhere between "Once upon a time" and "thereafter."

I want that ride again. I want a destination, and the fear that I won't discover that again has begun to give way to certainty.

Or sometimes they'd find a wonderful side trip with details I'd never expected or imagined.

I am plot's bitch, always have been, but I've got the knack of dialogue, too, praise be. I generally have a roadmap, but sometimes things happen I never expect. I was writing along one day in long hand (praise be for the laptop and the Palm Pilot, it'll probably keep my wrists whole a decade longer), and everything was flowing beautifully. There was a scene where two friends were saying goodbye towards the end of the story, and the one woman's husband puts his arm around her and says "Don't worry, So-and-So will be back soon. She'll come as often as she can." "I know," says the woman. "After all, she's going to die here."

I literally put down the pen and blinked at the page. I was in the middle of a very long series of stories, and I hadn't thought of how it would all end, far in these people's futures. But the woman was something of a visionary, given to these glimpses into the future, and I wasn't going to argue with her. And, yes, many stories later, the other woman, on a visit with her friend, did have one last adventure and died in her friend's arms.

I usually start with a situation, a what-if. The protagonist and a few other characters evolve from that. I don't have an organized plotting process (except in my work-in-process, wherein I ripped off Mansfield Park but changed the ending)--if I think about the characters and the what-if enough, the scenes will come.

Dialogue is my greatest strength, evocative sensory details my weakness. I don't spend much time dwelling on word choice or details of craft in general, but my writing group tells me I have a distinctive style.

For now, I have a superfluity of ideas. I have four more ideas for romances after this one--two more Regency-era, one contemporary but with a time traveller for a hero, and one purely contemporary. I also have a fantasy epic that I don't expect to know enough about to start writing for another few years yet.

I get glimpses of scenes. Usually middle-of-the-story scenes involving the characters hanging around my head at the time. Those are the basis for my interrogations while I'm torturing the characters (Who is that? You said this was about a girl - what's he doing over there? Oh, now you're saying it's about the money. Why's that?) trying to work out a plot. My notebooks fill up with outline variations and research notes. At some point, I find the hook, that essential question buried in the story that makes it important to me, that makes me need to write it to try to work out an answer.

Questions like "How do you stop being lonely?"

I'm not good at abstraction. I'm a complete philistine when it comes to poetry, that's why I've never tried to crit any that's been posted here. But these abstract questions are what tie me, viscerally, to the story I write.

Gah. I'm going to have to post something if I keep trying to sound like I know what I'm talking about. I'd better shut up...

I'd rather you post than shut. Maybe after the second job goes by the wayside?

I have nothing significant to add, but I think the work here is superb and I adore this thread.

Maybe after the second job goes by the wayside?

It'll have to be. I'll need posting space on a webpage or a list of volunteers or something. I've got something in progress that I'd like crits on, but posting it in the thread wouldn't work.

We'll see, come next week. I haven't even touched my taxes yet.

Victor, marked. Will go look when I can actually sit down and read without being snorted on.

Heh. Thanks, and thanks to all. Hope people enjoy it. Through the magic of the Internet, it may change depending on people's reactions. I'm hoping to use this as a means to launch it to some small press, then get it off my back all together so I can concentrate on new projects, like the magazine and such.

And I just don't *get* that model at all. I don't do that. I'm conscious of every single word and how it affects the text as a whole.

Rebecca, first the magic happens. Then I edit like hell. And iterate. Fix a little, create a little, fix a little, create a little.

Like, last night I started a weird sonnet-mutant. There were spaces in my mind where words had to fit. Something something heat, reduce. What's going to fit in there that matches my thought and matches the meter?

When I finally had a draft, there was that temporary-resolution moment. I had a plateau to rest on. Now I can nitpick every word, tune it, rip some bits out, but I know what the architecture is, I know what the poem is saying, I know what the time sequence is. I didn't know any of that when I set down the first line.

The torturous times are when the magic won't come and I have to plow through without it.

Victor, reading....

Meanwhile, a question/sitatuation:

Years ago, I wrote a suspense thriller with supernatural overtones (yeah, I know, there's a big surprise) called "Still Life With Devils." It was one of three casualties of my divorce from the publishing industry in 1993; my agent at the time did nothing for it, no clue how to deal with it, and I simply put it away and forgot it until about 18 months ago or so.

What with the splendid current agent, it's being revisited with a view towards submission, possibly under a psuedonym, although that's likely unnecessary, since ghosts and supernaturals are fairly closely linked with my work and name. Thing is, she (Jenn, the agent) made some really good points about things that need moving, dropping, altering, adding and whatnotting. A lot of the changes (infuriating) are things I changed at the request of the first agent, notably "They're black? You can't make the brother and sister in this black! You're white and you'll piss off the black community because you're, well, white!"

Gah.

Question is, if anyone wants to read and comment on this thing as it now stands, would you let me know? This is not not NOT an editing read; it's a read-as-end-user and so, tell me true, what strikes you about the story? read. No edits, typo checks, etc and whatnots required; read and review as a reader, not an editor, basically.

Anyone who does will be much loved and also added to the thanks/acknowledgments page.

If anyone's remotely interested, give a yell and I'll shoot a PDF over.