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Ever feel like you’re writing in a vacuum? You send out your work, and very seldom do you get any explanation why it’s rejected (or even accepted.)  Participating in a critique group or workshop (often the words are used interchangeably) can give you the feedback you need to improve your writing. And for science fiction, fantasy, and horror writers, it’s crucial to find a group that specializes in (or at least allows) your genre.  Fortunately, several well-respected speculative fiction writing workshops thrive online these days.

Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror

The name of the workshop—The Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror or OWW S&F— pretty much sums up what the group is all about.  It’s an online community of speculative fiction writers, aspiring and published, who help each other improve their work. The workshop boasts a respectable number of success stories, including Hugo Award-winning writer, Elizabeth Bear.

The review process works on a point system. Members need to review four stories for every one they submit.  Submissions can be short stories or novel excerpts under 7500 words.

Once a month, the Resident Editors review outstanding submissions in the workshop newsletter.  The editors include, among others, Jeanne Cavelos, a writer and former senior editor at Dell Publishing, and Susan Marie Groppi, the editor-in-chief of Strange Horizons. Jeanne Cavelos is also the founder and director of Odyssey, an annual six-week writing workshop held on the campus of Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire.

OWW S&F requires a low yearly fee for participation ($49).

Critters Workshop

Critters Workshop is a free online critique group for science fiction, fantasy, and horror writers.  Dr. Andrew Burt (a.k.a., the Critter Captain) and his army of software minions run the workshop.  Members—or Critters—must maintain a certain level of participation in order to have their own work critiqued.  (The posted rules make it sound more complicated than it is. Basically, you need to contribute a substantive critique of one 2000-word or longer story per 75% of the weeks you’re a member.)

Submissions can include short stories or novel excerpts under 20,000 words. Critters also has a special program for critiquing entire novels, something notoriously difficult to accomplish in most workshops.

Other Worlds Writers’ Workshop

Other Worlds Writers’ Workshop is a free online critique group strictly for science fiction and fantasy writers.  (They don’t allow horror or mainstream submissions.)  Other Worlds is an email-based workshop with members of all writing levels.  The group offers a structured program for beginners to teach the basics of speculative fiction writing.

Members must complete two critiques a month to stay active and must critique two stories for every one they submit. Members can submit any length story in any phase of completion, from draft or work in progress to polished story.  (Most workshops encourage submitting only completed work.)

Hatrack River

Hatrack River Writers Workshop is a free online forum that includes peer critiques of short stories and novel fragments for writers of science fiction and fantasy. The workshop is part of Orson Scott Card’s official web site. Writers can post fragments (up to 13 lines) of their short stories or novels in the appropriate forum area and ask for feedback and/or volunteers to read and critique the entire story.

Zoetrope Virtual Studios

Zoetrope Virtual Studios is an online workshop for a wide range of fiction, including short stories, novellas, poetry, and screenplays. Although it’s not dedicated to speculative fiction, the Virtual Studio allows science fiction, fantasy, and horror submissions.  Bear in mind, though, they might not be reviewed by writers familiar with the genre.

Participation requirements vary per length or type of story.  For instance, participants in the short story wing must review five stories for each one they submit whereas in the novella wing, members only need to review two novellas for each one they submit.

The Virtual Studio is associated with Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios and All-Story magazine.  Exceptional submissions to the workshop may be selected for publication in All-Story.

Note:  One of the better known online workshops, Clarion Virtual, an offshoot of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, was discontinued as of September 2008.

This is Pay It Forward Interview Week, the brain-child of Elana Johnson. About 15  young adult /middle-grade authors are each interviewing a fellow pre-pub author every day this week. 15 blogs,  75 interviews.  Kathy McCullough will be posting an interview with me on Friday. Unfortunately, I got on the bandwagon a little late to find someone who hadn’t already been asked.

Check out the Pay It Forward Interviews on the following blogs:

• Elana Johnson,
• Lisa and Laura Roecker,
• Beth Revis,
• Leah Clifford,
• Victoria Schwab,
• Kirsten Hubbard,
• Susan Adrian,
• Dawn Metcalf,
• Carrie Harris,
• Amy Holder,
• Kathy McCullough,
• Gretchen McNeil,
• Tiffany Schmidt,
• Kim Harrington,  and
• Suzette Saxton/Bethany Wiggins.

Unfortunately, Writing Science Fiction 101 isn’t in many college catalogs.  Several online schools for writers have sprung up to fill the niche, though. Most offer instruction on the nuts-and-bolts of writing as well as genre-specific classes.

Gotham Writers’ Workshop

Gotham Writers’ Workshop (http://www.writingclasses.com/) offers several ten-week science fiction classes, each taught by established authors.  Rated Best of the Web by Forbes Magazine, the Gotham Writers Workshop offers classes in New York city as well as online.  Classes include web-based lecture, exercises, chat, and story critiques.
Science Fiction I and II cost $395 ($365 for returning students).  The Master Class is $545. Registration fee is $25 per term.

Writers’ Digest Writers Online Workshops

Writers Online Workshops (WOW) (http://www.writersonlineworkshops.com/) offers a six-week  “Essentials of Science Fiction Writing” course developed by John DeChancie. Class format includes web-based lecture, exercises, and feedback. The “Essentials” class costs $199.

Writers on the Net

Writers on the Net (http://www.writers.com/) lists a few genre courses in its catalog, including a ten-week “Imaginative Fiction” class taught by John Shirley. Class format is primarily email-based. Most ten-week classes cost $310; most eight-week classes are $260. (Not every class in the catalog is continuously taught. Check the site for class availability.)

Free Lessons

If you’re not quite ready to plunk down several hundred dollars for one of the above classes, you may want to check out some free lessons that a couple of noted authors have posted online:

• Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy (http://www.writesf.com/) — a self-paced writing course developed by writer Jeffrey Carver.  Free.
• Uncle Orson’s Writing Class (http://www.hatrack.com/writingclass/index.shtml) – lessons posted by Orson Scott Card on his Hatrack River web site.

I just finished reading I am Scout: the Biography of Harper Lee by Charles Shields. I didn’t realize until I was well into it that this book is the YA version of Mockingbird, Shield’s full-fledged biography of Lee.  [The tip-off was a few of the facts the author felt necessary to explain, such as what morphine is.] Since I haven’t read Mockingbird, which is about 150 or so pages longer than I am Scout, I can’t really tell what Shields didn’t deem suitable for a younger audience. But, the YA version doesn’t seem like it’s dummied down for kids. The tone is serious and informative.  I can imagine teachers reading Mockingbird to better teach the novel but assigning I am Scout to give the students a better understanding of the author.

I am Scout sheds light on many parts of Nelle Harper Lee’s life, including why she never wrote a second book, but I’ve always found the friendship between Harper Lee and Truman Capote rather fascinating. And, I’d wondered what happened to that friendship in later years. For those who don’t know, Lee and Capote—who wrote In Cold Blood, Breakfast at Tiffany’s—grew up on the same street in Monroeville, Alabama during the Depression. Capote later moved to New York when his mother remarried. The character of Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird is, as Capote proudly proclaimed, based on him.

Neither the young Lee or Capote fit in with their classmates in Monroeville. She was a headstrong tomboy who really didn’t care what other people thought. Capote was a target of bullying because of his clothes, size, and other factors.  Most of those classmates were surprised they became fast friends.  Shields describes them:

She was a female Huck Finn, with large dark brown eyes an close cropped hair. Whereas he—as surely every child at Monroe County Elementary knew that night followed day—was a sissy, a crybaby, a mamma’s boy, and so on. (22)

Yet, the two were inseparable.  Both had their own theories as to what bound them together. Lee called it a “common anguish.” Capote said they were both “apart people.”  They were in their own little world, and their world loved words.

The “apart people,” though, had contentious relationship. Lee was always quick to defend her friend to others, but she wouldn’t take crap from him, at least when they were young. And, he always tested their friendship as if he were sure that someday even Nelle would give up on him.

He finally went too far, though, when he cut her out of In Cold Blood. Harper Lee had helped him research the case, accompanying him to Kansas. She was his paid research assistant—all the while To Kill a Mockingbird was being published. Her notes (and support) were instrumental in the writing of his book.  Her novel was published in July 1960 to dizzying praise, which no doubt irked Capote. The movie, To Kill a Mockingbird, came out two years later, also to much acclaim.   When In Cold Blood was finally published in 1966,  Harper Lee was shocked to discover Capote had only briefly dedicated the book to her and his longtime partner. There was no acknowledgement of the work she had put into his book. One of her friends said, “Nelle was very hurt that she didn’t get more credit because she wrote half that book.”(188)  She felt betrayed.  The two apart people grew apart from each other after that.

Last weekend, I took my Susans—my best friend and my step-sister, both Susan—to see Alice in Wonderland. Burton, Depp, and Carroll. Together. What could go wrong? I know. Sleepy Hollow. Willie Wonka. I live in hope, though, and I wasn’t disappointed. Let me just say, I am also a sucker for movies/books/real life where the girl/woman defies the expectations of her restrictive society (or family) and does her own thing in the end.

One of my favorite lines in the new Alice is said by the Mad Hatter when he and Alice are fleeing the Knave: “You used to be much more…’muchier.’ You’ve lost your muchness.” The last time the Hatter saw Alice she was a fearless child. (She was six in the original Alice in Wonderland and seven and half in Through the Looking Glass.) Now, in the Burton’s movie, Alice is 19, and she’s running away not only from the Knave but also from a marriage proposal and the prospect of a lifetime of being a bird in a gilded cage.  She denies being the right Alice. The right Alice—the one Wonderland needs—is supposed to slay the Jabberwocky on Frabjous day and defeat the big-headed Red Queen. This Alice has convinced herself that her original adventures were nothing more than a recurrent bad dream that she’s tamped down inside of her—much as she’s done with her muchness.

That’s what society expected from her.  Muchness may have been tolerated in a precocious six-year-old or even encouraged by a doting father brimming full of muchness himself. However, Victorian society expected her to smother her own curiosity and verve and wanderlust, to marry well, and pop out the next generation of lordlings. Alice couldn’t completely smother her muchness, though. That’s why she ran when Hamish proposed marriage in front of all of the upper crusty society. That, and because she saw the White Rabbit.

She followed the rabbit back down into Wonderland, back down into the scene of her childhood adventures. There, she’s once more shrunk, stretched, scratched, stuffed into a teapot, stretched and shrunk some more until she ultimately reclaims her muchness. She remembers her childhood self, that she is the right Alice, and acts to save Wonderland.   “How’s *this* for muchness?” Alice cries as she lops off the head of the Jabberwocky.  She defeats the Red Queen and restores Wonderland to its own former muchness.

Alice could have stayed there in the court of the White Queen. The Hatter certainly wanted her to, but Alice knew she needed to face her real-world life. She returns to the surface, muchness still intact, to tell Hamish and everyone assembled thanks but no thanks. Everyone, that is, except her late father’s business partner, whom she convinces to do business with China. In the last scene, Alice—in a lovely Alice blue suit, perfect for adventuring—sets sail for China.

[Here’s my only quibble. Why is it always just the father or a father figure like the partner who’s not intimidated by the strong young woman? That’s a whole ‘nother post, though.]

Losing or forgetting one’s muchness isn’t just a product of corseted Victorian society. The time-period lends itself to telling these kinds of tales because of how circumscribed women’s roles were in that society. Screenwriter, Linda Wolverton, said she researched how young girls were supposed to behave in Victorian society and made Alice do just the opposite. (NYT) The corsets are gone now, and girls can grow up to be whatever they want—practically.

But, we still lose our childhood muchness some time after 12 or so, it seems. We may lose our sense of wonder, our openness to experience, and our innate belief in ourselves. I think this is what fascinates me about YA/MG literature. It’s the time when we’re expected to start growing into our roles in society. The roles may be more loosely defined now, but the definitions are still there. Women are expected to look a certain way. (Men, too, but not to the same extent.) We’re all expected to do the school-work-family thing. We may spend our teen years rebelling against and/or embracing those looming roles.  And, sometimes we lose part of ourselves.  So, we need heroines like Alice to remind us not to lose our muchness in the process of growing up.