The loneliness of the short story writer:
why Mash Stories believes in feedback
Anyone who has ever entered a writing competition will
know the feeling.
and find nothing wrong. You read it and discuss it and
discover that you would not change a thing. It is exactly
the way you want it to be.
The strange mix of elation and trepidation that
overwhelms you as you hit enter and send your story
out into the world.
You have two choices then. You can pop your story in a
drawer and forget about it, or you can start the whole
process all over again, with no guarantee the results will
be any different this time round.
For many writers, stories are precious things. They exist
only because their imagination has set them free, yet
they are never independent things. A piece of the writer
always remains within them.
All of this takes a lot of determination, a lot of self-belief
and, as I said earlier, it takes guts.
As such, they are intimate objects, personal objects,
things worthy of protection.
Here at Mash Stories, we understand these frustrations
only too well.
Hitting that send button takes guts.
As writers we have all been through the submission
process. The rejections slips are piled high on our desks
too.
Because you’re sending a piece of yourself out into the
world to be scrutinised and judged, you are making
yourself vulnerable, and it takes a strong constitution
not to be unnerved by that.
But we also understand that it doesn’t have to be this
way.
It certainly requires a degree of dedication and
organisation, this is true, but, as we are learning, it is not
impossible.
We have found it helps to consider a few specific things
when reading a submission. Call it a checklist, if you will.
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Plot
Character
Language
General Theme
Author’s Potential
With these simple, objective criteria you can pretty much
get enough sense of a story to evaluate its merits or its
faults.
Beyond that, of course, comes the subjective part.
Every reader has their own personal taste when it comes
to stories. Some prefer character led tales, others a wellpaced plot.
Some prefer rich, poetic, textured language. Others like
their prose to be short and snappy and taut.
The more stories you read and evaluate however, the
more one thing becomes clear.
A good writer will create a well-structured story that
hits you with the very first sentence and keeps you
hooked all the way to the end.
Our aim here at Mash Stories is to demystify the selection
process and make it as transparent as possible. We want
our writers to know why their story was selected or why
it failed to make the grade.
While there are many positive aspects to entering
writing competitions, there is, undoubtedly, one very big
downside.
Feedback, even if it is only a few words of
encouragement, can be incorporated into the
judging process.
Invariably you will enter and you will not win.
Worse still, you will probably never know how far your
precious story came during the judging process. Was it
eliminated in the first round? Did some readers like it?
Did I just miss out on the shortlist?
Why not?
In the 6 months that Mash Stories has been up and
running we have received hundreds of stories, some
well-crafted, some less so.
We also want to get our readers involved in choosing
a winner by voting for their favourites on our shortlist.
After all, our opinions are just that – the opinions of our
judges - and objective checklists can only take you so
far.
Who knows?
It has been fascinating to see the ingenious ways writers
have responded to the three random words - as our
shortlist shows.
Hopefully our reading process and voting structure will
provide our writers with two things: useful feedback and
an insight into the impact of their story upon readers.
If we can say anything about the writers who submit to
us then it is this: you have powerful imaginations, and
this is something we believe should be acknowledged.
Writing, after all, is a solitary business and we here at
Mash Stories understand that a little encouragement
now and then can make all the difference.
It can seem, at times, as if your story has been sucked
into a black hole.
All you can do is dust yourself down and try to figure out
what it is that needs fine tuning.
Perhaps, if you’re lucky, you have a trusted group of
readers who can help you, who can point out the things
that aren’t working and suggest solutions.
Since we started offering free feedback last quarter,
very few writers have declined our offer.
On the face of it this may seem daunting. How can you
respond to hundreds of stories? Impossible, surely?
Sometimes though, you can go back to a rejected story
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