Critique

For the workshop, everyone must submit one piece of less than 10,000 words for the first week. In Courier New 12 pt. this is about fifty pages per person. Some of the submissions have been the first few chapters of a novel, and others have been short stories.

I have to admit that I am totally digging every single one thusfar.

Since these are unpublished, I don't want to write too much about them. But we have stories about wizards and dreams, conspiracies and the apocalypse. The ones I've read so far haven't been too scifi, or too fantasy, or too urban. They're all a nice muddling of genres, which I love. Had I, instead, read these in the Taos Toolbox Quarterly Vol 3.2, I would have been equally delighted. This is high quality work.

I'm not sure that my critiques are on the right track... I tend to write about what I love, instead of what can be improved. I hope this will be helpful to everyone else, and I can always revise my critiques once I'm at the workshop, and have a feel for what the others are saying.

It's a whole new challenge to critique a lot of work at this level. I'm up to it, and I'm enjoying it, but it's still intimidating. I've still got 8 submissions left to read, as well as finishing TINAG and Steal Across the Sky.