Funny thing about black and white. You mix it together and you get gray. And it doesn't matter how much white you try and put back in, you're never gonna get anything but gray.

Lilah ,'Destiny'


The Great Write Way, Act Three: Where's the gun?

A place for Buffistas to discuss, beta and otherwise deal and dish on their non-fan fiction projects.


erikaj - Feb 11, 2014 9:21:14 am PST #5916 of 6706
Always Anti-fascist!

Congratulations! For myself, however, I'm beginning to think I've said all I've got to say, even though I haven't published that much. Fifteen rejections in a row really make you wonder that.


hippocampus - Feb 11, 2014 10:34:44 am PST #5917 of 6706
not your mom's socks.

Erika, In a row rejections are evil and I hate what they can do to your drive.

If it helps, I can tell you from reading for a magazine for over a year that the numbers are brutal and you should keep trying, keep writing new things, as much as you can, if that is what you want to do.


erikaj - Feb 11, 2014 12:23:15 pm PST #5918 of 6706
Always Anti-fascist!

I know cold streaks happen, but this one seems exceptionally long and has left me feeling as though I don't know my own work.(I sent out a bunch of work over the last six months or so hoping to be desensitized, but it seems to have had the opposite effect.)


Amy - Feb 11, 2014 12:27:37 pm PST #5919 of 6706
Because books.

Maybe try something different? Write what means the most to you, instead of writing for a market, or write something you always told yourself you couldn't. Sometimes you just need to break out of a rut.


erikaj - Feb 11, 2014 12:39:25 pm PST #5920 of 6706
Always Anti-fascist!

I don't know. It probably doesn't help that my life has barely two parts: writer/indigent(and not really the gritty Carver kind. I'm too weird to write normal things and yet? Not strange enough to get locked up and make "outsider art")ETA: Which I mention not to incite pity, but because it makes rejection extra crushing when there's not some part of your life where you're really satisfied to point to.


erikaj - Feb 11, 2014 12:40:30 pm PST #5921 of 6706
Always Anti-fascist!

Well, okay, maybe I'm strange enough and haven't got caught yet.


Polter-Cow - Feb 11, 2014 2:44:41 pm PST #5922 of 6706
What else besides ramen can you scoop? YOU CAN SCOOP THIS WORLD FROM DARKNESS!

Awesome, Sox!!

Ha, that sounds like awesomesauce. Awesome, Sox, you're awesomesauce.


erikaj - Feb 14, 2014 9:16:56 am PST #5923 of 6706
Always Anti-fascist!

Here's an attempt at one of the prompts...I don't write romantic things often. Maybe it's the date today. A middle-aged woman(although she would probably never call herself that, she knows she is. Probably, if not as ready for support hose as that phrase makes her feel) and a young man, arm in arm, step into the hotel suite they got for their anniversary. “Can you believe it’s been a whole year already?”

He nods, looking as proud and happy as she feels, but she likes it that he doesn’t jabber to fill the silence. All this joy from a relentless best friend playing with the age range on a dating site.


-t - Feb 21, 2014 3:04:35 pm PST #5924 of 6706
I am a woman of various inclinations and only some of the time are they to burn everything down in frustration

Who has two thumbs and a copy of April's Azimov's on her kindle?


hippocampus - Feb 21, 2014 3:37:31 pm PST #5925 of 6706
not your mom's socks.

Who has two thumbs and a copy of April's Azimov's on her kindle?

Kermit flail.

-t how'd you make me allergy from all the way across the country.