Am working away at The Spare. I have a mood today. And that mood is - well, despair up front with determination to fix it behind. Interesting. I feel like I made a mistake sending the material I did to Leisure. I believe I'll have a really compelling story when it's done, but it isn't perfect yet and hasn't been reviewed by anyone but me. Just day before yesterday, I layered in some additional material and corrected a logical error about my heroine and have now got more complexity.

I've been pretty active on the email lists etc but I'm feeling perhaps that I should not be any more. Lately, there's been a lot of complaining about judges (not me because I haven't done any lately) and I must say it's disheartening to hear about judges who don't temper their remarks or who make what seem like hurtful comments (telling people to give up) But there's a flip side to that which is what about all the writers who can't hear the suggestions? I'm sorry, but if you want to succeed in this business, you have to sigh be able to hear messages that your work needs improvement. Besides, that's one of the risks of contests. The point is NOT to win, not really. The point is to get feedback so that you can revise your work and get it to an editor who wants to publish your story.