Purely because if you do I’d like to give these things a glance over.
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I do… though I’m incredibly hesitant to admit it. I’ll look over your stuff, but I’m not big on gentle proofreading. I feel like picking out flaws is more important than praise. That’s how I do in my local writing group, anyway.
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Just nonfiction and essays. Fiction writing is still literary alchemy to my brain–why, I don’t know. I have an ear for dialogue but otherwise I wouldn’t be much help in that domain.
Like @ActionAbe, I tend to take an aggressively constructive approach to criticism.
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Do the Banestorm BBS game and a blog count?
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Yes, want to read some? Generally one to two pages, non fiction, and no edits (edit: no edits by me (edit: well, I ruined my perfect batting average on that))
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Hit me.
Also yes banestorm and blog count.
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Hey, why not. They are better in my gravelly, Nick cave esque voice, but take that as you will.
[B]Civil engineering[/B]
The term civil engineering is likely one of the most boring, blase, yet mind boggling concepts in modern culture.
Civil engineering involves two very big things:
- Blowing the shit out of stuff
- Erecting huge structures
Usually it involves both, though not at the same time.
My father was never a trained civil engineer, yet he had a knack for the first qualification. People dont have a wish for injury or pain on others, but let us face it–big booms are exciting. This may help explain the 4th of July, Chinese new year, and many other holidays punctuated by explosions.
Back on topic.
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My father was paid to remove a number of tree stumps. Now, you can do this in a number of ways. The top three are
- Dig them out.
- Winch them out.
- Blow them out.
I suspect you see where this is going.
The charges were set around the stumps. The expectation was the dynamite would loosen the roots which would in turn make winching them out much easier. But as they say, best laid plans of mice and men.
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I do, sci-fi in short bite sized sections. It’s pretty unrefined though. Right now it’s over on Renderosity in my gallery but I’m debating on refining it and moving it to a blog or some such thing.
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Short stories. Little formal training, and even less honest criticism. Would happy for an honest and brutal assessment–am sure I have a ton of issues.
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A Short Aside
This is fairly important, though a detail. My father’s truck bed was chock full of dynamite, charges, and huge bags of fertilizer. The same kind of fertilizer used to bring down the Oklahoma Federal building.
Back to the story
The charges and dynamite were set and lit off. But it didn’t loosen the first stump. The stump was shot 100 feet into the air. Where did it land? A several ton stump that just got blowed up into the firmament?
Precisely. On top. Of the [I] dynamite, fertilizer, and charges[/I] in my father’s truck bed.
Fertilizer is explosive when under pressure. How this incident failed to create a massive crater still blows my father’s and my mind.
The end 
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Fertilizer is explosive when under pressure.
It’s more of a long term cook-that-shit-up thing. ANFO requires detonators to get the detonation wave going through the material. Unless he was mixing the crap in the pickup during the shot or left the bag of detonators on top of the pile of dynamite/ANFO/etc.
Not a great way to win a Darwin Award. Great story, though. As far as I know, modern explosives, including properly mixed ANFO, are tame-ish to physical shock and fire. Nobody uses shit that isn’t unless they’re trying to make detonators. Detonators and sensitive compounds are the scary shit. Also wet fertilizer piled up by the ton that catches fire. Maybe it was raining? Makes the story more frightening but would reflect badly on your dad.
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Is this just looking for something to read or is it a critique and peer review?
Because I’m pretty good at undermining my own confidence in my abilities as a creative person and I don’t need the help, thankyouverymuch.
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Just ‘oh hey other people write. I have a tablet. I wanna see some of it.’
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Cool. Here’s muh blog. I swear I’m not drunk when I write them.
I’m only high on life… and coffee… okay, mostly just the coffee.
(The Banestorm game can be found in “games”)
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Good point. The detonators were on top, but the stump barely missed them.
But as Chuck Tingle once said, never let facts get in the way of a good story.
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I’m still at the revision stage for that fanfic I mentioned; I’ll probably be getting around to posting chapters starting next month. To keep the schedule slip issue at bay, I’m just going to stick to a weekly posting schedule so I can maintain a buffer. So… long way of saying, “Will happily post the link when ready, but for now, beta readers only”.
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@singletona082, I think you’ve tapped into what seems to be a lot of unspoken interest in writing among BBers. I’m envisioning several forked threads sharing a #writing hashtag but each with a different focus. This focus could be defined by genre (and I expect that’ll be the most common type of differentiation) but also methodology (ex: sourcing for nonfiction, how to write from unfamiliar personas in fiction, etc), publicity, and publishing.
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Sorry - maybe I missed it. What’s the “things” that you want people to glance over? Is it the awilliamgeorge link?
I just started writing after several decades of being to scared to do so. I find it fun and liberating, though I have yet to really complete much of anything. I took a writing class (gotham) and probably will take another higher-level course. The one thing I learned from that course is that having a good group to workshop stuff is really important. They should be people you respect (from a writing perspective) and who appreciate (if not work in) your genre.
I personally think in-person workshops are probably best, so I am not looking to join a virtual one right now, but I think if it’s done right a virtual one could work too.
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There is a reason I requested a writing category tag in the meta thread.
Also trying to get the get up and go for not just writing but most anything longer form. Between this craft project that was supposed to be five minutes with scissors glue and a couple spare shirts turning into a hot mess and just general ‘men’… Trying to find my get up and go.
That said half tempted. Try writing something for here as a pass along story using just my tablet. Because why not add a new challenge on top of already difficult to focus on thing right?
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