Claire Waller

I always approach a new blog from you, Richard, with a feeling of anticipated pleasure. I am never let down.

Presumably we’ll shift the challenge over to here if the Cloud breaks. It often doesn’t load for me at all, particularly if I try to go onto the notifications page.

I found the Cloud has been slower and more erratic than ever over last few days. Could be coincidental or coukd be increased activity I guess. Suggest that everyone keeps a record of their choices and the story when it comes to it, just in case.

I was wondering that, but it was happening to me just as much before the announcement.

Without wishing to sound too pessimistic, what happens if the Cloud finally breaks beyond fixing before the conclusion of the challenge?

Sounds interesting – will look it up

Thanks PB – I realised when I blogged about this on the Cloud it was almost a couple of years ago and there had been some significant developments by then. I’ll put something in the Lifeboat in the next couple of days

It’s worth reminding ourselves here of Neil Gaiman’s famous quote:

‘When someone tells you something isn’t working, they are nearly always right. When they tell you how to fix it, they are nearly always wrong.’

Yes, there wasn’t much fantasy being written then, certainly not on the industrial scale we have today.

Obscure though Cabell is to the reading public, he has been quite influential in his genre. He nfluenced later writers of humorous fantasy like Jack Vance and Fritz Leiber, whose stories also feature protagonists who fall some way short of…[Read more]

Ah! Now I understand. Welcome Elle/L, good to see you

Fascinating stuff Richard. Not an author I recall coming across, though the title quotation is familar. It soulds as though he had throughly subverted many of the common tropes of fantasy before that genre really got going.

Yes. It’s one of the little snarls to be untangled – that sticky topics show in a sub forum even though they are located in a separate forum.

I see the lifeboat FAQ and the house rules thread as well as this topic and the creitique FAQ

Yes. Excellent point, Squidge. When monkeying around with someone else’s work, it’s important to always remember that your ideas and the author’s ideas may not mesh. Any rewriting should be done sparingly, strictly as an example (unless the author requests otherwise) and the power should always be returned to the author when you’ve finished.

My agent experience is sh!te, so I can’t help much except to say that, so long as you don’t utterly muck up the cover letter, it shouldn’t matter hugely. I honestly believe that any agent who likes your work will like it regardless of the cover letter, and any agent who dislikes you because of your cover letter regardless of the quality of the…[Read more]

Can I add something extra to this list, Jules?

By all means, give examples of how differently something could be written when you give feedback – sometimes seeing the work written differently helps you as the author to understand what difference that kind of change could make to your story. But don’t be tempted to completely rewrite the whole…[Read more]