On Peer Review in the Context of the Internet Age

One of the things I love about the age I live in is the immediacy of access to what you want. If I want to watch a movie, I don’t have to go to the video store, find it, check out at the counter, etc… instead, I can simply rent it straight onto my computer through the wonders of the internet. If I want to read a book, but don’t want to wait to order it from an analog bookseller, I can simply buy the PDF file and start reading right away.

This immediacy has implications in more arenas than just entertainment though. It can also be a very powerful tool for a writer. Traditionally, obtaining or providing peer reviews is a long process. You write something, obtain hardcopies of it, distribute it to a few people, and wait. Eventually, they read it, attack and maul it with a red pen, and sometimes even remember to give it back. After you’ve collected the wayward copies of your work, you dig through them, evaluating the criticisms and praise, and then re-write, factoring in the input provided. This can often take days, weeks, or sometimes months, depending on the length and the punctuality of the reviewers (and also on how much you’re bribing them to read your stuff.)

But the internet, wonder that it is, has changed that. There are a plethora of sites out there right now that can allow you to obtain instant access to peer review, and it’s almost guaranteed that you’re currently a member of one. Facebook? Myspace? Just put your work up as a note or blog, and tag everyone you know. Within hours, often even minutes, you’ll have a full share of insight on your piece.

Of course, when doing that, one takes one’s chances. Because on Facebook and Myspace, like it or not, most people aren’t writers. Their input will probably be limited to “This was really good” or “Too long” or “WTF is this? Why did you tag me? Do I know you?” admittedly, if you write very much, you probably have some friends with literary wisdom who can help you out, and so I encourage this as a starting point.

But you can take this to the next level and start getting serious, legitimate reviews by joining and posting on websites dedicated to writing or art. DeviantArt is a huge artistic community with a large literary sector where you can probably get good peer reviews and critiques, and it’s easy to get started. There are other sites too, such as Storywrite and Allpoetry, both of which I occasionally post on. Because these are sites dedicated exclusively to writing prose or poetry, the membership and readers that they attract are almost exclusively Writers and Poets. And if you can get writers and poets reading your work, then you can count on getting some good, sound reviews and thoughts.

But the road to getting useful peer reviews is not one-way. If you want to get read, and get reviewed, you need to read, and review. People don’t like to give away their time for free, so in order to get noticed and get people to devote time and energy to evaluating your work, you probably need to take the first step and evaluate theirs. Get out there and read the things people write, and let them know what you think with considered, carefully formed comments and critiques. More often than not, if your comments are insightful and useful, these people will return the favor. They’ll check out that one person who left a really usefully tip or comment, and they’ll probably read what you write, and contribute useful information of their own.

So that’s my views on Peer Reviewing in the Internet Age. But there are some other things to remember:

-look to connect with people who are genuinely good writers. If you try to establish a peer-review-working-relationship with people who suck at writing, or don’t really try, then you probably won’t get anything useful from them. So seek out the good authors and get their attention, because if they’re good, there’s a reason why, and they just might share it with you.

-Be considerate. If you go all Banzai on some poor soul’s pride and joy, the only thing you’re likely to get from him is a heaping dose of insult and useless trolling. If you are polite, logical, and thoughtful, then you’ll likely receive the same in turn.

-this whole “peer review relationship” thing can turn into another great thing for writers: networking. If you establish a relationship of mutual respect and assistance with a good writer, that can be invaluable down the line, when they might be in a position to help you. Making connections is an important part of making the leap from recreational writer to pro, and it’s never too early to get started. With that in mind, cultivate a list of friends, acquaintances and peers who are either already excellent or clearly headed that way, because your connections are only as useful as they are capable.

On a final note: Peer Reviewing is one of the most painful, joyful, and beneficial parts of any serious writing venture. Getting other points-of-view can take your writing from mediocre to classic, if you let it. But there’s one other important benefit: you can make lifetime friends through this process. Several friends who I value I met through this peer-review process, and over time and through many revisions and suggestions, we grew close. And a good friend is always a good thing to have.

On Vignettes

On Vignettes.

As I work on this novel, I often find myself randomly penning snippets or excerpts without any idea where they actually fit in. a scene comes to me involving my characters or locations, somewhat ethereally, and I write it. This usually happens in class, when I should be paying attention to my ridiculously intelligent Life Science Professor. However, I don’t pay attention to her, but instead fill the pages intended for notes on bacteria and flagellum with random snippets.

This is, for me, a good thing. Writing my characters into situations, even if it never plays into the main narrative, helps me to flesh out their personalities, to cement their identities in my mind, and makes it that much easier to write them as dynamic personas in the future. So I write these side-stories, these vignettes, and I keep them, occasionally putting them up for viewing in order to get a read on people’s reaction to the character or location in question.

And I encourage any other writer to occasionally pen a few disconnected snippets, just to establish for themselves the character’s unique behavior and worldview. Sometimes, when working on a story, we spend all of our time working right on the story and just getting the narrative down. And sometimes, nay, oftentimes, that is a good thing. That dedication is the lifeblood of a writing endeavor. But it’s good occasionally to take a step back and do some character or location study free of the confines of the story itself. When you’re writing a character without having to forcefully progress along the narrative tracks you’ve laid, it gives you some leeway to explore that character fully, to question how he or she would react to certain situations, or why.

As for locations, setting unrelated side-stories in the settings of your main plot allows you to do the same. I’ve written a forest-oriented city into my story. Now if I write myself a vignette about, say, a thief committing acts of his trade across the city, it allows me to roam, to explore the locale and invent things about it I may never use. It helps to have as much knowledge or idea of a place as possible, even if you don’t use it all, because it allows you to avoid the pitfall of locations that are simply two-dimensional backdrops for events, and establish places that are dynamic and catalyzing, real touchstone places that take on a life of their own.

So next time you get really caught up in a story, think about taking a break and Vignette-ing (I am aware that “vignette-ing” is not a word. But as a writer, I have the power to influence the direction our language travels in the future. So me inventing that word is just my way of pulling on the strings of the future. And THAT is real fun.) Because if you do, you might just find that it takes your main story to a whole new level.

Postscript: a Vignette is a short, complete story, sketch. or similar work of art, just in case you didn’t know.

On Writer's Block

So, I guess now is as good a time as any to cover one of the most important subjects in writing: Writer’s Block. If you’ve ever tried to write anything, then you know writer’s block. Here’s what you need to know about writer’s block:

-It sucks.

-It WILL happen to you

-It only occurs when it’s extremely inconvenient

And

-It can be beaten.

So, now that the basics have been established, I’m going to delve further into it. Writer’s block is one of the biggest obstacles between amateur writer and professional. It is the bane of all writers, but the best find a way to slay this particular beast.

There are a ton of different methods for dealing with writer’s block. My mother always told me growing up that the simplest cure was just to look around at your surroundings, and write down all the words you can think of. And it works, but not all the time, and not for everyone. Other suggestions I’ve heard include everything from imbibing of alcohol to reading poetry. But here, I’ll list my favorite methods:

-Write-or-die (http://lab.drwicked.com/writeordie.html). Essentially, this handy little tool is an evil taskmaster that makes you write. You punch in how many words you want to write, and a time limit, and it proceeds to make you do it in a variety of ways, depending on which you select. Mostly, it makes extremely unpleasant noises. However, I recommend Kamikaze mode, in which, if you go for more than a few seconds without writing, it starts to delete what you’ve already written. And that is extremely good motivation.

-Editing: yes, I humbly propose that editing can be a cure for writer’s block. Next time you just can’t write, pull out an old piece and go after it. Tear it to pieces with your trusty red pen, cross things out; rephrase them, and next thing you know, you’ll be writing something new.

-Pure force of will: okay, so this doesn’t always work, but it can work most of the time. Just sit down, steel yourself, and write a sentence. Apply all your cold, merciless, emotionless technical knowledge to form a paragraph. Because the key to beating writer’s block is momentum. Once you get rolling, build up some steam, then you can keep going, but those first words are vital. So, take a thought, and make it a sentence. Don’t worry at first about prose, or elegance, or any of that, it will come later. Just form a legitimate sentence, then two, then three, then a paragraph, and so on. And soon enough, you’ll have something. Alternately, if that doesn’t quite break the deadlock, combine this with the other method and go back and edit what you just wrote.

-last tip: music. Good music has cured my writer’s block more than almost any other thing. The secret here is to find the right song or genre. Just start out in a genre, and listen to a few songs. If those don’t help, move on. Try music you don’t listen to much, obscure or out-of-date genres, whatever. But it’s almost a sure thing that somewhere out there is a song that’ll fit like a key into your particular case of writer’s block, and blow it wide open.

On maps...

Well, I’m currently neck deep in one of the funnest stages of writing Fantasy: The Map Phase.

I’m unleashing my inner cartographer and mapping out my world, filling pages with topographical depictions of mountains, rivers, lakes, forests, even some grassland. I’m naming things that may never actually be in the story, creating features at random just because I can. I mean, I just built a massive wall across a country, just for kicks!

In a way, the mapping of a world drives many of the other facets of the planning and execution of a story. When you create countries and nations and cities, you create political and economic considerations, military necessities, and potential narrative options. If there are two countries next to each other, then an author must consider how these countries interact, how their cultures and societies differ, what each might produce or import, ethnicity, religion, and so much more.

While it may seem a frivolous and infantile pursuit, mapping is, in fact, a requirement for good fantasy, even if the reader never sees it. The author should form the maps, commit them to some kind of record, and force himself to abide by the rules and places he’s created. As opposed to just putting pen to paper and spilling forth unorganized thought, a map forces an author to consider and plan, to think things through that he might otherwise neglect. Because the map is not just geographical. One would be remiss in any substantial writing to not map out the narrative, to form an outline of the plot. The mapping is simply a visual representation of an outline for an epic. Because in this form, the story is told across distances, from various locales. And how those locales interact, how they contrast, is vital to the story.

The story of an epic, especially in fantasy, is not stationary. It travels, it moves, it is not static. And in order for it to move, a world must be established for it to move within. In fantasy, this world must be created from scratch. That is good, because it allows one the freedom to adapt the world to the tale, and not the other way around, as non-fantasy fiction often requires. If you need a group to go from point A to point B, but need a trial in between, then in the map you can provide a mountain or valley, a river or fortress to overcome.

Certainly, a story could hardly be told from a geographical perspective alone.

But it can hardly be told well without that perspective.

A Humble Introduction

Well, now, I suppose it's introduction time. So allow me to start: I'm Mck. Or Mick, if you read phonetically (loser), and I’m a writer. Of course, that's a horribly general statement, but I make a lot of those, so you should get used to it right now, or you're going to hate me. And nobody hates me and gets away with it (I’ll MAKE you like me dangit, or die trying).

But, since this is the first post and all, I guess I'll give in and expound here. When I say that I write, I mean it very literally. I write all manner of things. Primarily I write fiction of various sorts, mainly short stories and random snippets, with a few running stories. But those things are not really the point of this blog. The point is that I'm writing a novel. Yep, that's right, me, lil ol' Mck, age 19, college student, etc... Am writing a book.

Crazy, right? So here's the scoop:

The current title of the book is "The Wanderer's Lament." It's a fantasy.

Ha, I can practically hear you running away. "Oh no," You say, "Not fantasy. Fantasy is for Nerds and people with poor hygiene! And I simply will not stoop that low!"

Well, guess what, you opinionated person you: I'm a nerd. Admittedly, I'm not an archetypical nerd; I don't really fit the schema, and so on. However, I have EXCELLENT personal hygiene.

Ugh... I can't believe I’m in a situation where that has become something worthy of boasting about...

Moving on: Yes, Fantasy. But no, I do not play World Of Warcraft, I don't play any role-playing games really, except for occasional bouts of FFXII on my rickety old PS2, whenever I’m not writing, studying, or doing something more interesting (you can read that as “Really, Really, Really rarely.)

And no, The Wanderer’s Lament does not contain any of the following:

-Elves

-Dwarves

-Orcs

-Goblins

-Magic Rings

-Dragons

-Hobbits

Because, seeing as I am not an archetypical nerd, why should I write archetypical fantasy? I still believe what Tolkien taught me a long time ago: Fantasy is, SHOULD BE, intelligent. It is a valid application of a writer’s skill and talent, and can be compelling, complex, and adult, without being ridiculous, bizarre, or unbelievable. I believe that fantasy can still be a gentleman’s pursuit, and should not be limited to the grungy basement-D&D players (no offense to you though.)

But most of all, I believe that fantasy doesn’t require nearly as much research as realistic fiction. And as a full-time student who supports himself, that particular detail is something of deal-maker.

And so it is that, with all the previously detailed information fixed firmly in mind, I am writing a fantasy novel.

At this juncture it should be understood that “Fantasy Writer” is not my dream job. It might be part of my dream job, but it is not all of it. See, I started out, and will probably finish, writing realistic fiction of the thriller/suspense/mystery genre. But, I do like fantasy, when it’s done well, and it happens to be what I can write right now, so I’m running with it.

And I’m going to tell you all about it right here. Now aren’t you excited? (Hint: yes.)

Now I will provide some background on “The Wanderer’s Lament.” It started around November of last year (2008) as just a rough idea which I came up with for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, in which you try to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November.) It didn’t work out very well, really, since I was busy to an insane degree at that point, and started halfway through November. I also had no plan at all for the Novel, and was just making it up as I went along.

Perhaps winging it works for some people. But for me, I just write the storyline into a corner and then give up and die. It’s how I roll.

And now, almost a year later, after bouncing around the idea of “the Wanderer’s Lament” extensively, I’ve resurrected it, and I’m going to do it right.

That covered, you are probably wondering one of two things. Either A) how much longer can this guy actually go on? Or B) Why now, and why write a novel at all if it’s not your chosen genre?

In answer to A: not much longer, trust me.

In answer to B: Simply put, because every author has to have a “first novel.” You know the one that fails miserably or doesn’t go over very well, or is the hardest thing he’s ever done? Yeah, THAT first novel. And the simplest road to my chosen destination (Author/Novelist) is to simply start writing, to crank out novels until one of them is good enough to be noticed, to get published. And so I’m starting right now, because if I don’t, I might never. And since I’m starting now, but don’t have the time for the extensive research a realistic story might entail, I’m going with fantasy, because if I don’t know how something works, I can make it up. (Not always, but sometimes.)

So, here’s a nutshell of everything you need to know: My name is Mck, or Mick if you prefer, and I’m a 19 year old college student in Texas. I’m writing a novel called “The Wanderer’s Lament.” It is a Fantasy, but not a cliché’ or traditional fantasy. It is original, and based on nothing. I am going to blog about my experience writing this novel, in hopes that some other aspiring reader out there might read it and either find it useful, or at least make themselves feel better by tearing me to pieces for sucking so bad. I will update at least once a week, sometimes more, on writing this novel, occasionally on just writing in general, and very rarely on life in general.

So, there it is. I’m taking my first step towards “Professional Writer” and you’re welcome to watch, laugh, or whatever. Enjoy!