testing a survey tool

https://www.jotform.com/form/10855625695

Third Quarter Honourable Mention

I just saw the posting for the Writers of the Future contest. I got an Honorable Mention for my story Osmandyas' Spirit!!! At first I was not sure what an honourable mention meant; but after asking around I found out that not everyone who enters gets an honourable mention...so for my first work this is a great thing!!! I plan on turning the story into a podcast and publishing it that way. I am working on the next story, and last night I figured out how it is going to end. The story is called "Macro"

It is in the mail.

Osymandias' Spirit is in the mail on its way to California. It is great to be in the game.

into the final edit

Well I got great feedback from my beta readers. The big problem with the story seems to be around POV - Point Of View. it is also too long for a short story, but is within the length limit for the Writers of the Future contest, so i am going to send it there. My goal is to have it finished by next Wednesday. I have also been listening to Tee
Morris' podcast Podcasting for Dummies and I have been thinking that this would be a great story to do as a podcast. Sometimes late at night I wake up and wonder of print is dead. Words are not dead, but is the traditional book dead?

Ozymandias' Spirit out to beta readers

Well the story is done and came in at about 11,000 words! I have sent it out to 4 beta readers and now I am awaiting their feedback. I want to send this in to the Writers of the Future Contest for July 1. I do not know if writers call use the term "beta reader" but the term works. I guess it is bleedover from the Software world I make my living in. Now I have to get working on my next story.

Osymandias' Spirit

Well it is done. 10975 words and it is ready for the edit. I have been working on it so I could have a week of editing on it before I send it to the beta readers. Wow I am tired.

A Slave to My Tastes

Writing class was interesting last night. The format of the class is this: the first half of the class is a lecture on some important aspect of the writing profession, followed by a break and then reading what we have written. Last night was a lecture on the supply-demand aspect of publishing, and how in many ways books are looked on as a commodity. The part that struck me was how the publishers are always looking to fill the niches of taste with product and I realized that I am a slave to my own tastes. Without thinking I have chosen to read only in a narrow vertical of the market.

So I have decided that this problem calls for drastic solutions. I came up with this idea. I am going to go into the bookstore with a 12 foot long tape measure and 2 dice. The first roll will be how far down the shelf I will go in linear feet. The second roll of a single dice will be how may feet up from the floor I will go. And at the point where the 2 axis cross, that is the book I will read. When I am finished, I will go back and roll the dice from where the last co-ordinates are and re-roll to find the next book.

Some might see this as a page from the Two-Face School of Decision Making, but I put it to you that choosing books this way will eliminate any bias created by dust jacket artwork, or whether the book is in the middle sight lines and I am guaranteed to read new work. I will start at one end of the science fiction shelf and move on towards the other end of the store's fiction area.

Right now I am reading Nightfall, by Asimov and Silverberg and then it is on to the novel, Planet of the Apes. So after these are done, I will begin the experiment.

It is an exciting prospect, this non-deterministic method of book choice, because it is going to lead me into fiction I have never read before; and I might find that I really like crime fiction or new westerns or other unknown-to-me genre , or whatever is in the shelves that I land on.