My flash story, "Disconnect," went out to Critters today. This one snuck up on me. It had been so far down the list on the 13th that I thought for sure it would get bumped to the 20th--so I was surprised to get an email saying my story might get held unless I got caught up on my critiques. And then I wasn't sure whether I got my critiques in early enough (I did my last one in the wee hours of the morning last night.) But I was pleased to see that I still made the cut--barely. My critiques were obviously received early enough, but I was still perilously close to getting bumped to next week: I'm the last one on the list!
This is the first time I've sent a piece of flash fiction through Critters, and it'll be interesting to see how many critiques I receive. In the past I've noticed that shorter pieces tend to get more responses, but if a story is under 2,000 words it only receives half credit--so it will be interesting to see whether people avoid it in favor of something that will get them full credit.
This, too, is the week I'm going to try for a Most Productive Critter award to get a free Jump-To-The-Head-Of-The-Queue pass. I've just sat down at my computer and am going through the list of options to read this week, and I've noticed that it seems to be very high on the Fantasy side. I don't want to read chapters out of a novel (since I don't foresee myself keeping up with the whole thing) nor do I want the time commitment of agreeing to read someone's entire novel right now, so I've got 16 options remaining. 8 of them are fantasy, 6 are scifi, and 2 are horror. Okay, so I guess it's not as big of a gap as it seemed like, but I had considered trying to get an MPC last week, and that week seemed to lean towards fantasy also. I wonder if that's common? I've never compared the numbers before.
Well, time to get critiquing!
2 comments:
do you find it a helpful site? with some sites i've looked into, it seems people are ... less than insightful with their reviews. "loved it" or, "this was great" isn't really helpful to me.
i'm in a different genre than you are, but i think i'm ready to get more serious about getting things edited and ... (gasp) 'out there'
Overall it is helpful. There are always a few that say only one thing or just don't get it, but there are usually a few that are really insightful and then there are the things that the majority have a problem with that, even if some didn't articulate it well, you come away with an overall idea of what it needs. If somebody's critique is under something like 200 words they're not supposed to get credit for it, and you can report someone if they give a really unhelpful critique. Critters used to be just scifi/fantasy/horror, but over the last year they've expanded to other genres. The other branches are probably still in their infancy (meaning fewer participants) but it's got a good infastructure.
Post a Comment