In the spirit of the site's one year anniversary, let's all share some of our accomplishments since joining the site.
True to its motto, the site has helped many members improve, learn, and grow as writers. Let's hear those success stories. Have you been published? Have you started submitting your work, or even just started writing more? I know I started writing the first short stories that I had written in ten years, and started submitting stories for the first time since I've joined LitReactor.
Let's celebrate ourselves a little bit.
I wrote some really great short stories with y'all this year.
It has also lead to some innovations in editing. When I was doing the Psychosis Anthology I recorded a version of Puppet Show and listened to the .mp3 for places where it sounded awkward aloud.
A year ago I showed up on this site trying to sell my book to people.
Smashwords never gave me any royalties. I took it down. Right now I'm going through that thing one mp3 at a time and trying to find another publishing option.
And then I can finally be done with that shit.
I've had 10 stories published online since joining Lit Reactor. (bryanhowie.com click bibliography)
I've also met some great writers, gotten my editing skills sharpened, and bleached my asshole. I don't know if that last one is related, but I'll give the site credit.
I also have a quote on Bryan's testimonial page. And I count that as a success.
Taking the Character of Evil class on this site was an eye-opener. The workshop peer reviews were ruthless, but amazing. The community discussions were also intriguing even though everyone butted heads once in a while. Keep our egos in check. I strayed for a day, and then came back. Don't think I can leave this site. Y'all might have to pry me away.
I've had six stories and counting published since joining the workshop at The Cult. Now the LR workshop. (http://dakotaltaylor.com/stories/)
I've met friends who I feel closer to than any "real life" friends I've had.
I'm pursing a PhD. so I can teach writing.
I currently read a lot of fucking books because of this place.
And I've got about 7,000 words of a novel. 2/3rds of I'll scrap.
====masturabatory thread=====
Litreactor has inspired me tremendously in writing much shorter fiction than I'm accustomed to, and I've gotten three shorts published recently because of it, including winning a flash-fiction contest that paid some $$! Thanks Litreactor for the inspiration!
@ bryanhowie you totally got the bleaching idea from story I posted here. So, that would make it a Litreactor success story.
The biggest door LitReactor has opened for me, personally, was the 4-week Talking Scars class with Jack Ketchum. Got more than my money's worth in perspective and feedback, but I also found myself getting excited by taking my writing in a darker, more personal direction than I ever had before, even when I was writing traditional horror.
Delving into Ketchum's prose--with his haunting masterpiece The Girl Next Door, which I had to stop and take a break from halfway through, and with his brilliant essay collection, Book of Souls--while simultaneously having his eyes on my own work gave me a newfound appreciation for realism in a horrific context, supernatural or otherwise.
More recently, I had to abandon a science-fiction novel project because I knew in my heart that there was another, more personal book I'd rather be writing, and in the past few days I've finally cut myself off from the gestation period and jumped into a first draft.
The forums here are great, the workshop's even better, and Richard's Storyville columns are a personal highlight of mine. . . .
But really, it's been that one single amazing experience that keeps me around. If you haven't taken the plunge into one of LitReactor's online courses, what are you waiting for?
Two shorts published! One created in a battle and one created for a LR Class! Hope to up my average to more than 2/year.
And Books and Booze--we couldn't have gotten a single episode done with out LR and the awesome authors here. Plus Alex up there designed our awesome logos :)
The Workshop has literally changed my writing forever. Learning to critique taught me how to write. I'll have a short story published this week; that'll bump my number up to three. Two of those three were written for Thunderdome and then workshopped twice; one was published by an LR contact. The extra eyes on my stories have improved me, but writing for an audience has, too.
I hadn't written in a year when I joined the workshop; now, I crank out about 5k words of fiction and 10k words for college classes. Even though those 10k are assigned, they're undeniably better than what I would have done prior to LitReactor. I've always been strong with non-fiction, but I learned to integrate creativity into everything I write.
Since joining LitReactor, my day job has grown loathesome, my personal hygiene teeters dangerously close to offensive, I get all my food from packages, my alcohol consumption and tendency to drink alone has tripled (based on returns at the bottle depot), and I have been neglecting real time friendships in order to keep up the virtual ones on the site. I am no longer able to press my heels flat to the floor in down dog either, and my savings account has been decimated from four online courses offered here that were impossible to say no to.
Thanks, LitReactor!
In all sincerity though, the online workshops have been manna to my malnourished writer-soul. They fit into my single parent/full time career bananas schedule, so merci tres beaucoup for that. I haven't worried about publishing this first year of committing to writing, choosing instead to focus my energies on craft aspects of writerdom, but I will, and when I do, I will credit you all in my interviews.
Litreactor has been great for me. I love the community, because i need the social aspect of writing. But the writer's workshop is where you become a better writer. Editing for others is fun for me now. I really enjoy reading new things on the workshop, and I can't wait to post mine. Litreactor has definatley helped me hone my skills. I'm a better writer since i joined. I crave reviews from tough people, and i get them. Thank you litreactor.
I joined LitReactor in mid July during the Scare Us Challenge. I hadn’t written any fiction of substantial length in years. Since joining I have two short stories I’m currently redrafting into the latter stages of completion. I also have four lovely flash fiction pieces that I have written. LitReactor introduced me to flash fiction through its Monthly Flash Fiction Smackdown and through its Flash Me thread. I’ve always wanted to tell stories but mainly limited my writing to poetry. Flash fiction is a great combination of the two crafts. I couldn’t be happier now that I’m writing again and the great members and staff at LitReactor have a lot to do with it. I think I have benefited most by reading the craft essays the site has to offer, (the few I’ve read, I’m still working on them.) The peer reviews in the workshop prove most helpful as well. I have learned things I didn’t know because other talented writers took time to point them out. I am very grateful of that. I also have been reading and reviewing other stories and googling how to review stories. I find that focusing on other writers’ work is quite beneficial for me to figure out what I do right or wrong in my own writing. I’m extremely happy that I joined and couldn’t be more thankful of everyone involved in making LitReactor the coolest network of writers and workshopping that I’ve ever been involved with.
This year I have wrote thirteen stories and learnt more about the craft of writing than I ever, ever learnt at school and college (what this says about my school/college, i don't know) I've been saving like a crazy person so I can take an online class and my self editing skills have sharpened considerably due to critiquing others workshop stories. I squeeze writing and reviewing in to my hectic life and love the way Litreactor fits around everything else i have to do. I've been part of War, Flash me, Scare us and I revel in a challenge. I should probably have a go at thunderdome...
Mostly i need to grow a pair of balls and start submitting instead of just re-reading and tweaking.
Two book deals signed.
I have followed Brandon's advice and posted naked pictures of myself all over the internet.
5 pubs in all
a hat trick (flash, short, novellete)
And one homer (a book deal)
All this is this year, and due to expanding my horizons and becoming more proactive in the writing world. I credit lit reactor and everyones uplifting competitiveness. Now to keep the ball rolling!
I've workshopped two stories here, got some good feedback and both were published (one only in part).
I've actually committed my university education to English Writing, with a minor in philosophy for fun. I am a 111 credits in with two and half more years to go. I am working on a Magical Realism piece that I have really been invested with. Just hope I can keep up the motivation. Cheers!
I wouldn't really call it a success, but it's quite a start for my age I'd say. I believe I'm in the double digits somewhere as far as online publications. Self-published some old poetry in a collection via CreateSpace. The networking I began in these forums is still growing strong and branching out from many different places. I've also gotten to interview some awesome musicians and authors on my own literary site start up.
Honestly, that's just a small resume really. The real value of this place is that I've made friends with 30+ interesting people. I now know editors, publishers, and more advanced writers I don't feel the least bit insecure about messaging with a question about anything. I have roughly 20 submissions out to literary sites and magazines every week. Before I hardly knew of places to submit.
The only thing I regret is not having either the time or money to participate in all that was offered.
At the end of the day though, I'm still just here for the jumblies.
Modest success, personal: joined LitReactor as under-employed single male who needed social network that spoke to my interests. Only submitted two stories and critiqued maybe 20 stories since joining in January.
During that time, got VERY employed (but underpaid) and became coupled-male in household of females. Now, LitReactor is my link to sanity and keeps me grounded in my interests.
Although I can't spend an hour or two a day on the site (as I did in the beginning), the few minutes I get every other day is an immeasurable comfort...which I consider a success.
(well worth $9/month even when I can't fully utilize the workshop)
I'm back to participating at the Community Writing Center here in Salt Lake, getting mentoring for the novel I'm in the process of polishing.
I made the important decision to 'let go' and allow my work to become a lot darker than it originally was in the first draft.
Made the informative decision after reading a few articles on LitReactor and a couple other sites to avoid the Fan Fiction genre, thus changing an important piece of my work-which I feel will work out much better in the long run. And in the process falling magically into the Fantasy realm. Well, at least I have one foot in there at the moment.
Submitted a couple of short pieces and posted up the Prologue and Chapters 1-4 on Wattpad to start getting feedback, etc...
Designed a book jacket, put up a website to promote my work and sit here impatient, desperately wanting to finish the polishing phase and move on.
All without resorting to too much alcohol or Advil.
Well, it's a qualified success story, but the steps to becoming a better fiction writer and finishing good works are the one and only two things, that are free of paradoxical confusion and that interest me. How am I going to eliminate all posing like that Geico bodybuilder directing traffic, and mix my godamnned style into the right rightly grounded pot that'll give my draft a chance to be a good novel I can feel rightfully proud in retrospect that I wrote. There's at least an idea I can evidently burn for and it seems I'm making those steps. Strive, get better, join a community, get bleached green, get going yourself as close to your own inner top as you can, hope the others out there in the firelight approve of your cave drawings, and there's the familiar life-in-the-food-chain ring to all of that. So what the puck?
I just read an article Big bleached A, little bleached a by (I got bleach on the mind because I rarely lol, and that bleach thing, whoever wrote it first, got me) by an instructor writer named Gingerich, John I think, maybe? Anyway, his real first name's over there next door somewhere in craft essays and his essay was about proceeding from the concrete ground of the setting and situation and characterization, into the abstract, rather than the other way around. And that article was right up my bleached alley, and a nice way for a relative noob to community to meet the Lit Reactor.
The other way around, in which your dreaming ideas instead of characters, is possible, but only I think for the absurdly skilled. And so the imbalance between the abstract and the ground because I'm busy doing the Geico, in my lust to be absurdly-skilled or erected over myself or whatever, has been disastrous for me.
To have made progress away from that compulsive posing (John Gardner described it as being a compulsive punster at a funeral, and then eventually your own as a writer able to reach others) is what i consider my accomplishment. It's clearly not over, the overwriting, is a little like that comedian Robert Klein's routine I can't stop my leg! but I can see that compulsivity between ideas and weird picture drawing can eventually be something something contributing to the type of fiction i'm supposed to write, rather than occluding it. Of course its no small chore retracing the steps of nearly a couple of decades now, devoted to becoming a frigid egghead. "Well, Maw, I finally made it," I realized at this crazy writer's conference in 2008. I'd estimate I only began making progress away from that self-absorption trap, that comes with evidently gluey fear and a madcap insecurity for your additional pleasure, about a year ago. I think it began to turn around from that little pit of realization to hope, when this became an institutional law for every page: I should never go more than a few narrative/descriptive lines before dialog and interaction between character's and their environment are driving the story. Even if I screw up the law in the draft so I can go wingy, I make sure of it in the rewrites, so that rather than the dead ideas, that make up some dreary personal philosophy it's at the very least aspiring to a living, breathing story
I need to save my penchant for obtrusive narrative for the damn memoir; which this is on the way to becoming so more than enough. My God; I'd get a pet but I've got three already.
Anyway thanks for the sugestion Avery, and for the Buffy. One of my favorite TV shows. I'm still not over a lot of the losses suffered in Sunnydale, may it rest peacefully in the hellmouth, before returning to the big screen.
