I Remember That Day. I finished the first chapter of a sci-fi story in which a sentient AI navigating a spaceship by herself was dancing, or more like gyrating to a tune playing through the ship. She moved from deck to deck by sliding down something like a fireman’s pole. Someone in my writing group looked at me and said,
“So…you don’t like women huh?”
Strike one.
Then there was that horror story I wrote which had a bad guy chased by an unknown creature. The creature surprised the man in the backseat of his car. It carried a powdery substance in a bag which I never explained. (think of Chekhov’s gun) After some dialog, my creature yells out ‘Flame on!’ turning into a torch. Bad guy gets away by running into the Baxter building. Sound familiar? (too close to the fantastic four)
Strike two.
Then I tried to make it easier for the reader to distinguish who was speaking in my dialog. In the SAME paragraph, I had ‘Sam’s dialog in bold as he talked ‘ and ‘Nancy’s dialog italicized as she spoke’. I won’t discuss what my writing group had to say about that one.
Strike three.
I’m OUT. Or am I?
That was the day I discovered writing is not easy, but I didn’t give up. I realized that bad writers quit when they learn the art of writing is difficult. A good writer, on the other hand, will continue writing….and learning. It did get better for me. Howso?
By talking to and exchanging ideas from other writers. I enjoy reading original stories from other bloggers and commenting on their work. Getting a comment or a like from fellow bloggers encourages more writing. I also exchange stories with my writing group for on the spot critiques. First draft work in progress is shared too. At the end of the day, I leave with more ideas and a better script.
Whenever I doubt myself, I go to the digital shelf and reread all of my problematic stories. Then I remember the encouragement from writer Stacey Levine:
“all the problems associated with being a #writer I consider good problems to have.”
~ Stacey Levine
Fictionista 
It is certainly tough, although I’m not sure I agree with the criticisms of your writing group. I think it’s ok for the AI to do some dancing, fireman’s pole or not, and I quite like the different characters in italics or bold, it’s good to experiment with ideas like that. That said, I’ve never got along with writing groups. I’ve tried, but there’s a mutual misunderstanding. The act of being in a group seems to stifle imagination, everyone conforms (although that may just be my cynical view). Do you find them useful?
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You make very good points. For now, I find them useful like spell check programs. I have a habit of switching POVs. They help correct that. As for the dialog in bold and italics – the criticism was ‘if my work were an essay, it would have been thrown out immediately.’ Hence the stifling of imagination. I use them until a mutual misunderstanding takes away the value I have of the group.
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That makes perfect sense, use what you can and don’t let them stifle your creativity. I hope you write more about them, it’s an interesting perspective. Happy writing my friend! 🙂
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It is really hard to write. I lost a chapter of my book (don’t ask me why coz I don’t know too) and had to do it again. It was frustrating, nothing was good enough
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Wow! Losing work is tough. Seems like you cant redo it better than what you had. Been there. Now I create backups on SD cards, save work in Google Docs, and save in Dropbox. Thanks for the feedback. What are you using to backup now? I hope you are!
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Thanks. I’ll start using multiple SD cards, I just hope I’ll remember where I put them
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