After reading a friend’s short story before she submitted it to a contest, I am floored, in perhaps both good and bad ways. Her writing is incredible! The way she describes sights vividly and pulls themes and a plot together with both likable and unlikable characters is great American novel worthy. I had very few comments for her story’s improvement. It also reminded me where I am in my writing “prowess.”<\/p>\n

Because of my most recent short story creation,\u00a0“The Test,”<\/a><\/p>\n

I know I still have some ability to write stories. However, my skills in regularly creating characters, plots, stories, etc. with no allegorical significance to the real world is lacking. That doesn’t mean I won’t someday have my stories on a family of bears based on real teddy bears published. I am looking forward to those series, but I feel now is not the right time to pursue getting them out there.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, I have so much work to do and still quite a few questions to be answered. (There is a time for passive voice.)<\/p>\n

I hope that hearing of my woes and thoughts and conundrums is of some benefit to you, somehow.<\/p>\n

I feel a bit like Eddy Chen and Brett Yang of Twosetviolin in the beginning of their video “When a 7-Year-Old FLEXES On You”: What is life? So much talent…Should I switch to viola?” Then comes back the recurring reminder: PRACTICE!!!!!<\/p>\n

Edit: I should also mention that my friend whose short story I reviewed is Emily Way, who helped edit\u00a0Fish Out of Water<\/em> and graduated from college with me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After reading a friend’s short story before she submitted it to a contest, I am floored, in perhaps both good and bad ways. Her writing is incredible! The way she describes sights vividly and pulls themes and a plot together with both likable and unlikable characters is great American novel worthy. I had very few […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1286,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[49,96,148,155,182,213],"class_list":["post-1384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-on-writing","tag-author","tag-fantasy","tag-novel","tag-perseverance","tag-story","tag-writing","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"yoast_head":"\n