Critical Thinking

Wherein our heroine gets you to do her job for her.

Every week on The Friday Challenge, we get the opportunity to see some of the best rough drafts ever to be exposed to the light of day. On those occasions when we, the troika, get around to coming up with a monthly challenge, we get to see the second or third draft.

But we rarely get to see that finished-oh-my-goat-is-it-ready-to-be-submitted-I-don't-know-but-I-have-no-one-to-ask-so-I'm-just-going-to-go-for-it draft. Even with a writers' group, I have a problem in that there are only two other sci fi writers: one of whom rarely comes, and one of whom rarely comes and has next to no scientific/engineering background. (What do you call a sci fi writer with no scientific/engineering background? A fantasy writer.*)

Many of us here hope to one day sell our stories to Analog or Asimov's or Stupefying Stories. I imagine I'm not the only one who would love to have other fans take a look before we commit to the postage.

That's why I propose we take a week a month, give or take, and feature a fully-formed, million-times edited story that one of us is hoping to send off to the big leagues. If you have such a story, email me at kersley.fitz at yahoo, and we'll get it in the queue. In the spirit of keeping them "unpublished," we'll keep them on the drop.io.

Once it's posted, you gotta do the work. Mark in the comments what you thought, where you see grammar errors or technical issues, where you thought the story dragged. **

How often will we do this? As often as you send me a story and I'm stuck for a topic to write on.

Do you think it'll work? Would it be story-judging overload? Do you have a story you'd like torn apart? Send it to kersley.fitz at yahoo dot com.


* Okay, okay, I admit that fantasy writers have to do research and stuff. I'm jus' saying, is all.

** We did once have a link wherein writers could send in stories that they knew weren't working but couldn't figure out why. I think that link was up for two years and got exactly one story.