Is It Any Good ?

Here is the quandry: Is It Any Good ?

The question that torments we writers who have yet to develop confidence and experience with our voices.

I've written about Hemingway's "bullshit detector" which is designed to determine bad choices we make from the less frequent good. My own calibration is still in some doubt.

I have made progress in crafting some work. I'm not yet satisfied with any of it. I am approaching the stage where I need to use exposure to the works of other struggling writers to recognize the garbage in my work. I can smell it. I know it is on there stuck to the page as if my work had been put to use storing fish. I can occasionally see the crap and scrape it off.

I am not sure I am perfecting my work or making it less shitty. Of course I know. I'm making it less shitty.

I've posted an add for Murderer's Row on a local meetup group whose weekly gathering of writers I attend. This would be a group of crime writers pushing their works along. Maybe to share, maybe just to read and discuss. it will probably not be a critique group if I can steer it. I suspect at this stage "things we like about it" delivered with a little honesty is as much as most of us can endue. The big bit would be the sharing.

No bites yet.

I'll probably put up a sign in Gene's bookstore. Maybe I'll put a sign in Agatha's too. I hate to resort to the internet because the face to face discussion has so much merit. Skype won't do the job for me. It could - but I'd really rather it not have it pressed to service.

Anyway - grinding it out. Tuning the detector. Felling solid about the progress on Despot and a little concerned that this one matters so very much to me. I am hungry to do well and pass my intended spring audition with at least two of the six works I'll churn out this fall.

I want to learn the craft. I want some decent pieces before I break down and go to a class. When the requirement to attend is to submit a recently completed work, I want to show I can hold my own.

I want to take a scalpel to the stories and tune them. I do not want to use a chainsaw on an onion.