I’m starting to wonder if I’m in the wrong line of work!
A while back (a long while!), I wrote a post about how I joined the online writer’s network called Helium. It’s a place for writers to go, submit their work and have it rated by their peers. All pieces are anonymously and randomly rated within the category that it was submitted to and other writers can comment as they rate. It’s really a great tool for receiving objective feedback about your craft.
The best part is that Helium is also used as a marketplace for publishers who don’t want to wait for submissions. Writers are “classified” based on their writing statistics (which is determined by your overall ratings) and this enables publishers to browse articles classified by any number of calibers. It’s truly a very intricate and incredibly large network of critiquing that allows writers to determine which of their peers they feel have the most merit. I always find myself feeling a little bit bad when I rate someone’s work because as far as I’m concerned, just contributing to the craft earns merit in and of itself.
So, after submitting my initial two articles to Helium, I got distracted by life and didn’t really end up going back. A couple of weeks ago I decided to dust off my username and jump back into the game. In turn, I felt ambitious and submitted another ten articles!
I think that I should take this opportunity to mention that I don’t really enjoy criticism very much!!! While some people go out of their way to receive feedback on their contributions to the world…I prefer to go on the basis of “no news is good news!” So the idea of submitting work for the sole purpose of it being critiqued does leave me in a frenzy of anxiety!! Every time I type in my password to log onto my account, my heart starts beating a little faster, the breath quickens and I find myself wondering why exactly I ever thought that this was a good idea!
I braved all of my physiological responses yesterday though and logged back on to my account. As it turns out, the gods of “pick one or the other” seemed to be in my favour and it appears that I may have missed my calling; not only have my articles been really well received by my peers but three of them have been ranked as the top article in their category (two of those being book reviews!)!
Yesterday’s blog post is ranked second as of this morning and this article is currently ranked 5th out of 105 submitted articles. And if that weren’t enough…I’ve been named as one of Helium’s Premium Writers, the highest honour given to Helium writers for visiting publishers searching the marketplace.
I’ve never actually submitted any work for publication before but I’m starting to wonder if it might be worth my while to do so!
It would be like sweet retribution for all the times that no one wanted me on their team for trivial pursuit!!!
A while back (a long while!), I wrote a post about how I joined the online writer’s network called Helium. It’s a place for writers to go, submit their work and have it rated by their peers. All pieces are anonymously and randomly rated within the category that it was submitted to and other writers can comment as they rate. It’s really a great tool for receiving objective feedback about your craft.
The best part is that Helium is also used as a marketplace for publishers who don’t want to wait for submissions. Writers are “classified” based on their writing statistics (which is determined by your overall ratings) and this enables publishers to browse articles classified by any number of calibers. It’s truly a very intricate and incredibly large network of critiquing that allows writers to determine which of their peers they feel have the most merit. I always find myself feeling a little bit bad when I rate someone’s work because as far as I’m concerned, just contributing to the craft earns merit in and of itself.
So, after submitting my initial two articles to Helium, I got distracted by life and didn’t really end up going back. A couple of weeks ago I decided to dust off my username and jump back into the game. In turn, I felt ambitious and submitted another ten articles!
I think that I should take this opportunity to mention that I don’t really enjoy criticism very much!!! While some people go out of their way to receive feedback on their contributions to the world…I prefer to go on the basis of “no news is good news!” So the idea of submitting work for the sole purpose of it being critiqued does leave me in a frenzy of anxiety!! Every time I type in my password to log onto my account, my heart starts beating a little faster, the breath quickens and I find myself wondering why exactly I ever thought that this was a good idea!
I braved all of my physiological responses yesterday though and logged back on to my account. As it turns out, the gods of “pick one or the other” seemed to be in my favour and it appears that I may have missed my calling; not only have my articles been really well received by my peers but three of them have been ranked as the top article in their category (two of those being book reviews!)!
Yesterday’s blog post is ranked second as of this morning and this article is currently ranked 5th out of 105 submitted articles. And if that weren’t enough…I’ve been named as one of Helium’s Premium Writers, the highest honour given to Helium writers for visiting publishers searching the marketplace.
I’ve never actually submitted any work for publication before but I’m starting to wonder if it might be worth my while to do so!
It would be like sweet retribution for all the times that no one wanted me on their team for trivial pursuit!!!
2 comments:
Congratulations! I can tell you from personal experience that all that criticism pays off - seeing your work in print is quite possibly one of the biggest rushes out there. And keep posting - I always imagined that I would spend years shopping around my first novel, and in the end, my editor found me, quite by chance, in a chat room (of all places!!). And all within weeks of finishing the manuscript. So write. That is what we, slave-women to the ancient art of the "belles lettres", do.
hey! congrats! :)
u do write real nice, hope i can write like u do some day XD
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