Wow. 2009 has finally rolled around the corner. Time for me to revamp this journal!

Last Updated: January 1st, 2009

Welcome!

'ello. ^-^ And welcome to my writing journal. My name is Shanra, which you may (or may not) have gathered already. I've been writing most of my life, although I'm nowhere near where I feel I should be before I start sending out material for publishment. I write chiefly fantasy, although I do occasionally dabble in something else.

I used to be a member of several online writing communities, some which I left because I didn't get the detailed feedback I really wanted and some which I left because the atmosphere changed for the worse. So I decided to create my own little atmosphere here. Well, kind-of. This started out as a repository for things I'd consider sending out (and posting it publicly is... well, not desirable) and that wouldn't fit on the other sites.

In late 2008, I decided to seriously revamp the structure of this journal. I'm still not entirely sure how to do it. I do have a few aims in mind with the revamping, though:

- Novels will get a chapter per post and links will go to the chapter index solely.

- Longer short stories will be divided into separate posts per scene to make post lengths more accessible for readers. (Regretfully, that means you still may run into posts of 3,000 words or more, but at least you won't find stories of 9,000 words all in one huge post.)

- An attempt at showing people prepolished (and finished) pieces rather than rough first drafts. This does result in fewer posts from me, though. By all means, poke me if I'm silent too long!

Basic Courtesy Information

As said above, the privacy of this journal is mostly due to potential copyright issues later in life, for which I apologise. By friending this journal, you're allowed to see all my short fiction, poetry and the first three chapters of any novel I post.

You're not obliged to read or comment on any of these, although I'd be very grateful if you did because I'd like to know what people have read and what they liked or disliked.

I do ask that you try to be a little more specific than "This was great!" or "This sucked" in the first comment because "Why did you think this?" is going to be the first question I'll ask you, but that's just a request. ^-^ I certainly won't boot you off this list for it. Likewise for not commenting/reading much. Life's life and may interfere. You're doing me a favour by reading these stories and telling me what you think. I don't want to put deadlines on something like that.

The only possible exception is the novels I post because these are the stories that I'd like to publish most someday. I don't ask for much, just that you commit yourself to telling me when you've finished a chapter and what you thought of it. I have no set deadlines (or if I do, I'll say) and you're more than welcome to read the chapters at your own pace. Just please let me know you've read them and what you thought of them. I'd like reading these to be fun for you (as opposed to a chore) as well as useful for me. If at any point you wish to stop reading, don't hesitate to let me know. If it's because you don't like the story I'll remove you from the group/filter. If it's because you're just too busy at the time, don't worry about it and thanks for letting me know. ^-^ Come back to the story anytime you want. ^-^

I know I often have problems with words and phrasings, so please do't worry too much about that. As long as you point out something, I'll be happy. (E.g "These characters are great!" as opposed to "This is great!" or "Your descriptions suck!" as opposed to "This sucks." Although in the latter case I'm liable to ask you what didn't work for you. That's easier to phrase than what did, in my experience. Maybe I'm just too negative a person...)

And I think that's it... Anything I forgot?

How to Find Things

Tags are short-hand for the series (or novel) stories I post go into.

List Posts, which as of this writing don't yet exist, will offer a list of stories related in some way. Most notably, these will contain the loose, short stories of my ASSP story-verse.

Memories are used to store challenge responses, sorted by challenge.

If anything in this set-up changes, I'll update this post accordingly. ^-^ Ask away, if you've any questions I've failed to answer in this!

: hopeful : Hayley Westenra - Across the Universe of Time : !info