Assignments, Crit Groups and Synopsis

Been a busy morning.

I have finished critiquing a query letter and a synopsis for a friend in the states for her YA novel. I have sealed up the latest assignment to go off for my diploma, posted a quick news item on HorrorScope and exchanged emails with the moderator for a new critique group I hope to join.

I'm about to start the next assignment to be sent out latter this week. Unfortunately I haven't received any response back from the assignments I've already sent in so I'm still flying blind. Hopefully I'm not doing things terribly wrong and have to resubmit everything. This is definitely a draw back of doing a course of study externally.

Last night my wife critiqued two of my stories, the fifth installment of "Too Late the Rain" and "Drinkers", a new short story I've just written. Her feedback was concise, honest and surprisingly good. I have read everywhere that family and friends do not make good critiquers as they will only give you positive feedback, not wanting to hurt your feelings.

Not so in this case. Her suggestions and questions were very good and allowed me to see things from the readers POV that I hadn't considered. As a rule, family and friends aren't the best to judge your work but give them a chance, they may surprise you.

Oh - my membership has come through for the Australian Horror Writers Association. Payment was made this morning so I should be a fully fledged member before the week is out.

Lastly - thank you to Amy. When I changed the layout to better reflect my writing on both this blog and my web site, I didn't check the documents in the Free Writing Tips section. I checked all the other pages, which looked good, but the type within the documents was in black font which doesn't show up very well on a black background. This has all been fixed.

Time to get back to work on my assignment. Good luck with your submissions and keep on writing.