You’ll recall that we made space on our site recently to showcase your work, in ways that are not connected to our blogs or any of our contests.  Send us your short story, chapter of a novel, collection of poems – you decide – and we will post up to ten or twenty unedited pages of your work for others to respond to.  You own the space for a week–we’ll post no other competing entries during that time, and your writing will remain archived, as  each week there will add a new entry to showcase.

The intent of this feature differs a bit our contests and blogs, where generally, the tone of responses has been encouragement – unconditional love, really.  And that’s been terrific towards encouraging a voyage on the keyboard, and has exceeded our expectations.

In this new arena, however, we would like you to submit in order to get feedback of how the piece might be improved. Time to take a risk.  Writing is a skill, but so is editorial critique.  Use your sensitivities to convey to each writer who posts their work how they might do so more effectively.  Of course, if you’re pleased with what they have written  in the draft they have submitted, by all means let them know.

My advice?  All of us are a work in progress.  Be encouraging rather than harsh.  Emphasize what you like, rather than what you dislike, and the writer will intuitively begin editing his or her work and future work accordingly.  Constructive criticism can be an oxymoron.  If there’s something you find confusing in the writing, or something you don’t like, ask the authors to explain themselves.

Here is an example of what I mean.  In one of my own novels, The Boy with a Torn Hat, I change from present to past tense freely, sometimes even within the same paragraph.  A conventional approach to criticism might be “You jump from one tense to another and it is confusing.”  A better approach would be to ask, “Are you aware you change tenses in your story indiscriminately?” That gives a chance to respond without having to defend.  Yes, I am well aware of that, and the purpose is to pull a story from the past into an immediacy of the present. It can always be debated if that works, or not, but now you know it is by intent.

This new feature, “A Word from You,” is here to improve the quality of your writing by engaging dialogue with other writers.  Send us your submissions as a separate word doc attachment, and be sure to include your name and contact information on the document itself.  If you prefer to remain anonymous, please indicate that on the document as well.

We are ready to post you on-line.  Let’s have a word from you!  Send submissions to info@awordwithyoupress

Best,

Thorn

Editor-in-Chief