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Showing posts from October, 2015

Fear and failure

I recently had a sit down with a new writer colleague. She had written a short story, and I had given over a piece of mine. The reason I had submitted something to her was she held a group activity discussing "show vs. tell" which is a trend in writing that trips up a lot of authors. It generally comes down to saying something explicitly (telling) rather than describing the thing and letting the reader infer (showing), usually through active voice. Her own effort was something she had been working on and was looking to improve on. I had read the first few chapters of a novel she was working on, in exchange for her giving me thoughts on my published one. That went a bit poorly (she cried), so this time I was focused on doing a better job. And I think I did. There were no tears, and there was much productivity all around, with her saying after the meeting that she felt like we had a lot to give one another, and she felt we even had similar styles. I'm still mulling that