"Disapointing Ultraviolet Retrospective'

[rissygirl]

It's nice to know that Queens University accepted some of my work for the Spring edition of Ultraviolet Magazine. It's also awesome to read the shitty reviews attached to it. "The prose and poetry is a hodge-podge of themes and styles. The pieces are of passable quality but are often plagued by an indelible lack of depth or excessively maudlin

Comments

[reotord]

Heh. Are you part of queens? Or were they accepting from everywhere? Still, at least they didn't mention yours as bad. The review seems a bit holier-than-thou cynical, so you'll have to see what the piece actually looks like befor making judgement, I think.

Still, a publication is a publication! Congrats.

[rissygirl]

Nah I check out placesforwriters.com for calls often. Queens had one a few months back. I haven't submitted anything since. I'm the biggest critic I have. I'll write something and end up deleting it within hours.

[reotord]

I'm much more relaxed with my poetry, since I consider myself a 'fiction' writer. I save everything, but I just have a big junk folder I save it to. Sometimes I'll go back and say 'hey, this is awesome!' and other times i'll go back to something I thougth was great and think it's terrible. I try not to get hung up on it. I do that way too much with my writing.

So, if you delete stuff, how do you decide what is 'good enough'? Do you have a criteria, or is it just a gut feeling?

[rissygirl]

I read it when I'm finished reading. At that point I'm usually satisfied. I go back about an hour later, to see whether it's worth fine-tuning. Most of the time I'll hate it and save a line or two, add it to a chopppy thoughts folder. Yes, I have a folder of choppy thoughts (and fuck is it full). So I guess I just go with my gut. I don't know is this makes any sense, but I feel like my voice is really changing. I guess it would since just about everything about myself has changed within the last two years. Ah the conflict!

I have about twenty something short stories written. I always have decent ideas, but my characters somehow develop MPD. I guess their moods shift with mine. Bad bad bad.