Umm... yeah.

[Ok, I have three stories, all almost ready to send out. So, what I should be doing is proofreading like mad, and making sure that I'm absolutely satisfied with what I've written. That way, I can actually send them out. These stories may be brilliant. They may be awful. But they're definitely not going to sell if I don't ever mail them out. I'm basically admitting this entry is cat waxing because proofreading is so much fun...]

I took the usual 6:30am bus to NYC on Saturday. Met up with my friend, J, at Drama Bookshop. We dithered while he found a place to eat for lunch. It's tricky. He wanted to try some place new. He's a picky eater. The places I'd love to try in Manhattan he blanches at. e.g., I've heard great things about an Italian raw fish place. We ended up some place old.

From there, he went off to see August: Osage County. I went off to see Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll. I really enjoyed the latter. It's Stoppard's take on the intersection between Czech politics from the late '60s to the '80s and the popular music of the time. The first few scenes were hard to get into. They were so short, and seemed to cut off just as they got interesting. Things click after an especially wrenching scene where we finally get to the emotional core. It's Stoppard, so everyone is erudite. There's all sorts of seemingly digressive discussion which, of course, al turn out to be relevant. (e.g., specific words in a poem of Sappho.)

Stoppard punctuates each scene break with relevant music of the area. (e.g., the cue that we've know entered the '80s is that act two opens with a song by U2. It's quite the change from everything that's come before.) It's a device that works well, when it works. Like I said, the first few scenes never seem to reach their point. That the music intrudes to end the scene does not help. (Also, I was highly annoyed that they didn't end each musical clip at the end of a phrase.)

The acting was uniformly excellent, with especially fine work from the leads Rufus Sewell, Brian Cox, and Sinead Cusack. I found myself fascinated with the length of various characters' hair. (It's significant to the story and needs to change quickly between scenes.)

Met my friend J, again along with another, D, for dinner. The restaurant we'd originally wanted to go had a longish wait. We put in our names, then went searching for another restaurant. We recapitulate the lunch problem, more or less. (The man that I marry will have more interesting taste in food, not that either J or D were ever candidates, BTW.) We end up back at the original restaurant, which eventually seats us.

The three of us go to the first Encores! concert of the season, Applause, the 1970 musical by Charles Strouse, Lee Adams, Betty Comden and Adolph Green based on All About Eve. Christine Baranski was under-rehearsed as Margo Channing. She'd apparently had the flu during Encores! very short rehearsal period. It was all smoothly professional, but not much more. However, Kathleen Marshall really outdid herself with her choreography. The gay bar scene was campy as all hell but the dancing was incredible. (That the male dancers all had these incredible bodies helped...)

I went into this knowing only the source material and a couple of songs. The show was not a pleasant surprise. The few songs I knew may be the only good songs in the score. That's too bad.

Our mutual friend E surprised us by showing up. (He lives in California.) So we chatted for a while. He's planning on showing up at the next Encores! concert. It'll be good to see him again.

We then went our separate ways. For me, this means taking the 12:30am bus back home.

During the various bits of down time (e.g., waiting for the bus), I read Elizabeth Bear's Carnival. Oh. My. God. I have absolutely no critical faculties when it comes to this book. Ok, I still have 160 pages left to go. It's still possible for everything to go pear shaped, but it's not likely. She's done everything perfectly so far. The characters are realistic, vivid, complicated, and compelling. The dilemmas they find themselves in grow organically out of their situations. There are no easy solutions. The world she creates is beautifully detailed and fascinating. The plot formed from all of these elements just grabs me by the throat and won't let go. (I wish I could take the day off and just finish the damn novel.)

So, on that mildly envious note, I'm going to proofread...

It turned out the airport didn't need anyone the Sunday before Christmas, so we didn't sing. That solved the problem of what pitch to give rather nicely. On one hand, I'm a little disappointed since it might have been fun. (I'm also disappointed that the choir didn't get paid for Sunday. Like all performance groups, we're terribly underfunded.) OTOH, singing Christmas carols for three hours straight might have pushed me past the limits of my cheeriness.

I theoretically had this past week off from work. In reality, I ended up working much of the week. TPTB promised comp time. My boss is a really decent and fair guy. I'm sure that I will get comp time. When I get that comp time is a legitimate question. There is a reason why I ended up working this week.

It was actually quite a productive week for me workwise. If nothing else, I have a better screen and keyboard at home than I do at work. Asking for a 30" LCD display for work is out of the question. The new Apple USB keyboard is too wonderful for words. (Well, ok, I'd like an insert key. But I only use it to toggle emacs between insert and overwrite modes.) It's also cheap, so I may just buy one for myself for work.

There are fewer distractions at home. (I live alone, obviously.) Considering I'm "non sequitur boy," the company may prefer me to work from home. (I had a performance eval which stepped up to the line of actually calling me "non sequitur boy", but didn't cross it.) I'm considering asking my boss if I can work from home more often. Actually, I don't think he cares one way or the other. I've announced that I'm working from home with no notice before. He's never spoken to me about it. Probably because he knows that I actually am working from home, as opposed to "working" from home.

The director of my choir also directs the Marsh Chapel choir. Obviously, the Marsh Chapel Choir isn't around right now, it being winter break. So, the director asked us to substitute for them for today's service. Ideally, he would have given us a little more notice and rehearsal, but since when are things ideal? It all came off surprisingly well. A healthy subset of the choir was available. Even better, that subset was relatively well balanced among parts. (I suspect when he sent out the e-mail asking for volunteers, he was expecting to hear from 15 sopranos, 10 altos, a tenor and a bass.)

I'm not religious. I have no worship practice. However, I really enjoy making it possible for others to celebrate their faith. I view concerts with dread. They're the price for allowing me to attend rehearsals. If it were ethical to rehearse, then skip the concert, I'd be seriously tempted. However, singing a service I do gladly. (However, actually being part of the congregation would be hypocritical. Yes, it's a fine line I draw.)

Ok, there's a caveat. This is a very liberal church holding an ecumenical service. I don't think I can help a congregation that doesn't believe I should exist celebrate their faith, for example. If that makes me a horrible person, well, I've long said that I'm someone who's likely going to hell for going to church (as opposed to not going). I did my share of church gigs in college too. (That was probably more hell-worthy since I was actually being paid.)

As vacations go, it's actually been pretty relaxing despite me having worked most of it. Maybe I can carry that feeling into work. (Sadly, I suspect that it's been relaxing because I haven't had to deal with anyone at all. I have a terrific set of workmates, so it's not personal. I've long concluded that my ideal job does not involve dealing with people.)

Oh yeah, I bought a stainless steel water bottle. For some reason, this makes me too happy for words.

This week has turned out to be busier than I'd expected. The way things turned out, I'm doing something just about every day this week. (Of course, what I want to do, go climbing, I don't get to do this week...)

I'm spending most of today waiting for the guy from the gas company to show up and replace my gas meter. (There's nothing wrong with the meter, as far as I know. They need to do this every so often as a matter of state law.) Right now, I'm wondering if I can work from home more often.

Wednesday is the D&D game that I'm now in. (Meets weekly.) Thursday is the writing group I'm now in. (Meets monthly.) Nothing on Friday (but climbing partner is busy).

Last night, I spent at choir rehearsal. A bunch of us are going caroling at the airport in mixed quintets. (Yes, the choir is being paid for this.) So, we figured it'd be nice if we at least practiced once in our quintets. Unwary travelers deserve better than to have unrehearsed mixed quintets inflicted on them. (Why it's mixed quintets when it's all 4 part chorale style arrangements? I have no idea. I didn't put this together.)

Anyway, my quintet was the only one who happened to have a pitch pipe at rehearsal, so I practiced giving pitch. (Why, of course, I have my pitch pipe with me at all times. It's on my key chain. I mean, where do you keep yours?) Who knew there would be a dispute over what pitch to give?

Ok, maybe I'd underestimated my quintet when I played tonic on my pipe pitch, then sang everyone's starting pitches. However, that's what our choir director does most of the time. The soprano of one of the other quintets suggested that I give only one pitch. I'm ok with that. That's what I would have done in college, singing with the music majors. (If they couldn't find their starting pitch from the root of the chord, they shouldn't be music majors.)

At that point, we, of course, had to have the discussion about which pitch I should give. I hadn't actually realized there was anything to discuss. Maybe it's an article of faith for me, but if you give just one pitch, you give tonic. (i.e., the key the piece is in.) Given that for every carol we're doing, everyone starts on some note in the tonic chord, it's actually the most convenient pitch reference for everyone. (Also, this is what our choir director does on those occasions when he trusts us to find our own pitch. This is also what I've been doing for years.) The tenor thought I should give the starting note of the melody. I guess the rationale is that, at least, the soprano was on pitch. (He didn't actually say that.)

When I insisted that, if I give only one pitch, it should be tonic, his response was, "What is tonic?" Ok, it's not exactly common jargon, and my mere two years of Harmony and Counterpoint in college means I, sadly, know more music theory than most. However, I shouldn't know more music theory than someone in an auditioned choir. (e.g., you do have to show that you can sightread before you get to join.) Apparently, I'm wrong about this.

This is a rehearsal, not a group discussion, so I give tonic. Since we're in the key of D, I state at the same time, "This is a D." I end up doing this several times before everyone realizes that I've given them a D. Unfortunately, I have the patience, and sometimes, the attention span, of your average puppy. So, after a couple rounds of this, I go back to doing what I wanted to do in the first place. I give myself tonic, and I sing everyone's pitches. I do this reflexively. (Everything we do starts with a tonic chord. I've given myself tonic. There are only two other possible pitches. If these carols are hard, it's because they sound stupid unless you nail them. They're not hard because opening pitches are tricky to find.)

Of course, because I'm not thinking about it, I sing the free, and easy high F# that I never manage to sing when it would actually be useful. *sigh* (If honor demands that the only pitch I take from the pitch pipe is tonic, it apparently also demands that I give everyone their exact pitch, not just the correct pitch class. Why doesn't honor warn me of these things ahead of time? Since my falsetto sucks, I may not go there for some of the soprano pitches. I don't think honor absolutely demands that I thoroughly humiliate myself for no reason.)

The good news is that this past weekend's choir Christmas concert and Monday's rehearsal has turned into a writing prompt. It's still stewing in my head. I hope to get a story out of it...

You get to send Andrew Burt, the Critter Captain, a note when you quit. I took the opportunity to tell him that his item about Cory in the October 10th Critter newsletter was petty, and that his current path undermines his goal of bolstering authors' rights. To my surprise, he wrote back. I honestly didn't think I was worth the effort. Unfortunately, it's the same hash he has always uses, served with an implied accusation of being closed minded on the side, garnished with a little passive aggression about me quitting Critters. My only reaction to the last is "Well, duh..." When is a protest resignation anything besides a futile gesture? In any case, I don't think of my action as a protest. After October 10th, my heart wasn't in it any more. It was either quit, or wait to be auto-deleted.

Dr. Burt seems to think that the people who disliked his actions are solely people who haven't taken the time to read, and understand, his side of the story. I wrote back to tell him he was wrong about that. I think I've read most of what he's written about what happened. I understand why he feels what he did were the right things. This does not oblige me to agree with him. I don't.

Yesterday, I had asked at the SFWA community why we should expect the copyright committee to behave any differently than the e-piracy committee. They are composed of the same people. No one directly involved in the errant DCMA takedown notices to Scribd has made any forthright statement that makes me think they wouldn't do it again. (The responses to my question are amusing though, if anyone is interested.)

Andrew Burt proved me right by doing it again. He raised Scribd as an issue for the copyright committee almost immediately after I asked my question. At least in this specific circumstance, I think I have a good read on Andrew Burt's side of the story.

I find this all sad. I think he genuinely wants to make the world a better place for authors. It's unfortunate that, on the whole, his methods and his actions haven't had that effect. What a waste...

I'd long decided that I couldn't stand my keyboard any more. (Difficult to clean. I didn't like the touch. Touch typing on the thing was not particularly joyful. For the record, it's the keyboard that came with my PowerMac G5 when I bought it three years ago.) However, keyboard shopping is a tricky business. If I care about how it feels to type on the thing, I can't really just mail order one.

Anyway, it occurred to me this week that Apple introduced a new keyboard several months ago. I could at least go try that one out. It's Apple, so all the pictures show off its sexy design. Certainly, it looks much easier to clean than their previous keyboards. If I really cared about such things, the aluminum styling matches the styling of my monitor, computer, and mouse.

I tried it out at the Apple Store, and to my surprise, I really like it. I tend to like either clicky keyboards (think IBM Selectric), or essentially flat keyboards. Mushy is right out. (Previous Apple keyboard was mushy as far as I'm concerned.) The idea is that I don't want to feel like I'm working to hit the keys. Typing into a sponge, or anything where there isn't crisp resistance feels like work to me. Sadly, there are an awful lot of keyboards like this. (The Selectric works because the resistance varies over the course of travel. It's easy, then there's a moment of sharp resistance, then it gives way.)

This keyboard doesn't have a whole lot of travel by design, but the action is crisp. You hit resistance at about the same point you would have in a Selectric. The difference is why you hit the resistance. In this case, it's because you've hit full key travel. This is definitely a keyboard for those with a light touch. (i.e., someone who wasn't so interested in the "gives way" part of Selectric key travel.) I like it, oddly, for much the reasons why I'm fine with flat keyboards. It's much more fun to touch type with this keyboard than my previous one. (Ha! Who needs full key travel?)

As a side note, I noticed something funny. Apparently, I can only attract the attention of sales people at the Apple Store only when I don't need it. The keyboards are on shelves so you can just pick one up and go. While I was doing this, an Apple sales person asked me if I needed any help. As I was waiting for my turn at the "cash register", another Apple sales person came by and processed my purchase. This is in stark contrast to the last time. I was trying to get the attention of an Apple store sales person and couldn't get one for at least ten minutes.

BTW, one more bit about the keyboard. I had read about this, and have now experienced it for myself. A quick hit on the caps lock key does not activate caps lock. You have to press and hold caps lock to activate caps lock. A quick tap will turn off caps lock though. I guess this is Apple's way of making sure that people don't accidentally turn on caps lock. (I do this on the keyboard I use for work. I've never done it at home though. Maybe I should bring the keyboard to work.)

In a Kitchen Note called "Humidity and Flour", they show skepticism to the view that an extremely humid or extremely dry day makes a noticeable difference to flour. However, since this is Cook's Illustrated, we get the following, lovely sentence:

"We constructed a sealed, humidity-controlled chamber in which we could simulate various types of weather."

Anyway, they showed that one extreme day doesn't make a difference. Prolonged exposure may, so they suggest storing flour in an airtight container. (This is a good thing to do anyway, IMHO.)

The chamber they built was probably more make-shift than the chamber I'm imagining. But I love the idea that they did it at all.

[he asks with a hopeful expression]

Judge strikes down Iowa's same-sex marriage ban, orders licenses for 6 gay couples

Yes, it's possible that the final outcome here is an amendment to enshrine bigotry and hatred in the Iowa state constitution. (Or, since this isn't Iowa's highest court, the decision can still be overturned on appeal.) However, at least for now, same sex marriage is legal in Iowa.

Same-sex marriage was unfortunately easy to dismiss when it was just Massachusetts, given the state's reputation. But Iowa is the heartland. Whether or not it is a bastion of liberalism, it is not known as one. If this sticks, I think same sex marriage will be much hard to dismiss.

Hopefully, gay couples will marry and people will see that Civilization As We Know It, in fact, does not come to an end. People go on with their lives as they always have. Only now, certain rights and responsibilities are available to all of a state's citizens.

Got "Detours on the Journey Home" back from F&SF. Sent it out to SH. (One of the really nice things about electronic submissions is that I don't have to print the story out, then go to the post office.)

Thought harder about the world's most overthought purchase. I've decided that what I really want may not be technically feasible right now. So I need to decide whether to get something close to what I want for now, or to live with what I have and want for what I really want to become technically feasible. The latter would certainly be cheaper. (It is unfortunate that the hard drive in my current laptop died about 1.5 years ago. At the time, I replaced the hard drive. If it were to happen now, I'd probably replace the laptop.)

Anyway, ere are my answers to the five questions which avocadovpx asked.

1) For the next 20 minutes, you cannot fail. The restrictions: you cannot use your power to accumulate money. You cannot use your power to get more time like this, or to give anyone supernatural knowledge. Anything you do takes the same amount of time it would normally take you (e.g, you can't write a novel in 20 minutes, but you can write a short story at your normal speed). How do you use this gift?

I'm not sure I would. I mean, the rest of my life would be such a disappointment, relatively speaking. The first thing I'd have to do would be to decide what to do for the next 19 minutes. Actually, I'd probably spend it learning how to make good, quick decisions.

How much I agonize over the placement of track points or chapter points is a running joke among a friends of mine for whom I've done some audio or video work. There's a reason I don't do much audio or video work. (Of course, I've been dithering over replacing my laptop for a while. OTOH, there's no actual rush there.)

Yes, I realize this is selfish, but 20 minutes isn't very much time. I'm stumped as to how much I can change the world for the better in 20 minutes, even in the best case scenario.

2) The American government collapses. We the people entrust you with the responsibility of choosing our next leader, who will be supreme dictator of the U. S. for the next 10 years. The stipulation: it must be someone, living or dead, who has written a book that you can find in your local Barnes & Noble or public library. Whom do you choose, and why?

I thought a while about this. I don' think I'm well read enough to make the definitive choice. However, based on whom I've read, I'd pick Richard Feynman.

He's never wanted political power, so he's likely to fix the government then get out of the way. He's dealt with politicians. He's spent time on government panels. Feynman is invariably the person who's done the work he's supposed to have done, and made all the tough, rational decisions.

At least by his own accounts, he's not one to be cowed by anyone, or to compromise for personal gain. I think he'd take the task of reconstructing American government seriously. He'd come up with one which would embody American ideals which stands a chance of lasting.

3) You are the owner of a successful restaurant. Which three dishes are unique to your menu, and how did you choose them?

This is tricky because my parents were the owners of a successful restaurant. (When they retired, they sold it to someone who proceeded to run it into the ground. Running a successful restaurant, nowhere near as easy as it looks, and it never looked easy to me.) So for the purposes of this question, I'm going to ignore the economics actually making a restaurant successful. If I take them into account, the answers would either be no fun, or I'd still be working on them.

The first is a beef noodle soup that my Mom made. There's actually a restaurant with a Taiwanese food menu in a strip mall near where I used to live which sells a version of this. However, I'm talking about the Platonic ideal here, the soup as I remember it which is undoubtedly better than my Mom actually made it, and certainly better than that restaurant made it. (This didn't stop me from ordering it on a semi-regular basis though.)

The beef stock was always rich and beefy. (Anyone who's read Cook's Illustrated knows how hard, and impractical, this is.) It was scented with star anise, and soy sauce, but without it being salty. The beef was always meltingly tender. The fat in the beef and the stock gave the soup this silky, luscious mouth feel. The sourness of the preserved mustard greens perfectly cut the richness. The noodles, cooked in the broth, always tasted both of beef and it's own substantial heartiness.

It's an open question how much of this I actually tasted though. I like chilis, and there were always some around. (My parents liked their food hot.)

The second is a dish consisting of foams aerated with helium. The foams are in a rainbow of colors. (We may have to finesse the blue) Each color would be the distilled essence of a single flavor: tomato, carrot, corn, cucumber, eggplant and some sort of exotic pepper. Ideally, it should barely weigh your tongue, but explode with flavor. (Practically, I'm not sure how you serve this.) Molecular gastronomy is definitely the wave of the future. (It may also be a fad.)

The third is dessert: barbequed bison ice cream. I like the idea of playing around with unusual flavors of ice cream. (I've had Guinness ice cream, and Grape Nuts ice cream. They were both pretty good.) The rich custard base would complement the lean, hearty, smoky bison meat. The sweetness pays homage to the notion of ice cream as dessert. The heat provided by the chilis contrast with the coolness of the dessert and provides a delightful kick to the dessert.

4) At this point in your life, would you trade the years you spent in school after high school for time spent doing something else? Why?

Hmm... What actually happened after high school was I went to college, went to grad school, talked my way into job A which lasted about 5 years, then talked my way into job B which I still have. None of this was planned, of course. (Yes, I didn't so much set out for a PhD as much as stumble into one.) However, I have gotten somewhere that I'm relatively happy with and I'm doing more or less what it turns out that I wanted to do.

It might have happened more quickly (and less discursively) if I had planned it all out and executed according to plan. I suppose that would have made me a happier person for longer. However, while there are some things I can plan, my life is apparently not one of them. Whatever I would have done probably would have lead to a discursive life anyways.

With the advantage of hindsight, I think there are a bunch of things I could have done differently. They would have to led to radically different possible lives. Some of them would have been better lives than the one I live now. A few of them might be worse. I don't think I'd risk the life I have to find out.

5) You are offered the chance to be the best teacher of young writers the world has ever seen. People who studied with you for six weeks would make progress that would otherwise take them 10 years. People who studied with you for 1 year (the maximum anyone could, without having their head explode) would go from slush rejects to the level of today's SFF grandmasters. The cost: you can never write fiction again. Do you take this gift, and why?

Finally, an easy one. I would so not take the gift. Yes, it's incredibly selfish of me to deny the world so many accomplished writers and offer up my own writing in their place. However, if I took the gift, I think I would end up accomplishing vicariously through them. That's not a good thing. (It's one thing to be proud of what your students have achieved. It's another to think of those achievements as your own.) Or it would all be quite frustrating.

The best person to take the gift is, of course, someone with no interest in writing fiction at all. (If this were a story prompt, what would happen, of course, is that the person who takes the gift develops an interest in writing fiction.)

(especially if I manage any level of success as a writer)
Oh, I like her fiction too, but I'm finding her Beginnings, Middles & Ends invaluable. She seems to have anticipated all of my questions. Also, the text is appropriately chunked for dumpster diving. (I actually read the book a while ago, but it's turned out also to be a great reference.)

I have this tendency to write these rather ambiguous endings. (No, it's not the people who critiqued "Lying in Wait" telling me this. I totally see this.) Most of the time, it's because my main character is in some situation that can't possibly be resolved in a short story. (Usually, I try to make sure there's something containable which I can resolve in the short story though. e.g., the story is merely one battle in an overall war.) I mean, I got a crit (via Critters) which compared my "Running and Falling" to Hemingway's "A Clean Well-Lighted Place." (Unfortunately, the critic didn't like Hemingway.)

Nancy Kress articulates cleanly what it takes to make the "contempory, literary fiction" ambiguous ending work as well as what it takes to make "traditionally plotted fiction" conclusive ending work. So with that in mind, I can go figure out how "Lying in Wait" is supposed to end. Personally, I'm wondering if there is a hybrid ending. I mean "Lying in Wait" is not "contemporary, literary fiction" by any stretch. OTOH, the situation the characters are up against is really too big to set up and resolve in a short story. On the third hand, my intent, at least by my 2nd draft, was to resolve something local and containable with the global situation as a backdrop.

(Actually, that makes me sound more structured and planned than I actually am. "Lying in Wait" was an exercise in positional plotting. I note, with a certain amount of amusement, that the interesting position into which I had placed my characters, and inspired the story, no longer exists in the story. And the story is better for it.)

Oh well, at least I know what possibilities exist and how I might get there. Besides, there are a few more people whose opinions I also really value who've just gotten "Lying in Wait." Also, I should give "Detours on the Journey Home" one more read through before I finally send it off to F&SF.

(Oh yes, and if I meet Nancy Kress and Ted Chiang at the same time, all bets are off. I'm very careful to stay away from Ted Chiang whenever I see him at ReaderCon, so he doesn't think there is a mad, jibbering idiot stalking him. I think I'm better off merely speaking of him in hushed, reverent tones rather than actually meeting him.)

I said I'd write about Online Writing Workshop and Critters, since I'm actually a member of both right now. I've been a Critter for over a year, but a member of OWW for only just under two months. My impressions of Critters are fairly well baked at this point. I'm still feeling out OWW so I have nothing conclusive to say about it. Also, since I joined Critters first, my impressions to OWW will be in comparison to Critters.

Critters is a free service. You stay an active member by submitting, on average, at least one critique three weeks out of every four. (75% crits to weeks of membership ratio.) Short stories are worth one crit. Short shorts are worth half. Novels, submitted as such (rather than chapter by chapter), are worth more. (I've never done a novel.) At minimum, you need to submit at least once a month. Each Wednesday, Andrew Burt releases a set of stories to be critiqued. Everyone has until the following Wednesday to critique those stories. On the following Saturday, Mr. Burt releases the critiques so that everyone can see them.

You submit stories to a queue for critique. You need to be an active member when it comes up to the top of the queue in order for it to be released to the Critters for critique. Your story can jump the queue if you have submitted the most critiques in a week, or if you have written more than 10 critiques in a week.

(The process is actually slightly more complicated than this, but I think this is fundamentally accurate.)

What this means is that there is one week when everyone is focused on your story, among maybe 30 stories. So over the course of the week, you can count on maybe 10 or more critiques showing up in your mailbox. (Or in my case, they got trapped in my spam filter. D'oh.) The quality of the critique is like the quality of the stories at Critters, variable. This isn't at all surprising.

Overall, I think the process works really well. It effectively guarantees that, as long as the story is recognizably in English, it will receive a wide variety of critiques. Whether you find any of them useful is a grab bag. The process also effectively forces you to critique continuously (so that you are an active member when you submit your own story). I think this is actually far more useful, and a better learning experience than receiving critiques. Elizabeth Bear has said that any author ought to spend a year reading slush. I've never done that, but I suspect that doing Critters approximates that experience. If nothing else, I've become much more coherent about what works and doesn't work in a story.

OWW works on a different model. Stories you send to OWW are visible the moment you send them and they stay there until you withdraw them. (Actually, I think there are several other reasons for withdrawal, but I don't remember right now.) Anyone can critique them at any time. Anyone can see anyone else's critique. You get a point for each critique you write. You need to spend 4 points to put a story on the site. You get 4 when you join so you can put up a story right away. Also, every month, each pro involved in OWW will make an Editor's Choice. Each pro chooses a work submitted within the past month and critiques it. You can have at most 3 stories up at once. Editor's Choices don't count against that limit.

Because the only way to submit a novel to OWW is in pieces, I notice a lot more novel sections in OWW than I do in Critters. I doubt that there are actually more novels, just that Critters, for the most part, keeps them where I don't have to see them if I don't want to. I don't know that the quality of stories or critique is any better or worse than that of Critters. In both cases, you have dedicated writers working on becoming better writers. However, OWW is a pay service but Critters is free.

For me, the key difference between the two (aside from money) is the story is available for one week on Critters, and for, essentially, as long as you want on OWW. Critters gives you this concentrated burst of critiques and there isn't much you need to do to encourage them. That's baked into the system. OWW relies more on the social component to encourage critiques. (Critters has a social component too. I just don't pay attention to it.) For example, people tend to trade critiques.

Also, the OWW system and culture encourages uploading revised stories. It's not that people don't submit revised stories at Critters. But I see it happening more often at OWW, perhaps because it's called out.

I tend not to do well on anything which relies on the social component. However, if the way to encourage more critiques of my stories is to critique other people's stories, I can do that. This may be the extent of any social interaction I have though. So if I need to do more than this to get critiques via OWW, I may be out of luck.

I'm currently experiencing a weird side effect though which I'm sure is not the common case. So far, I've put up a grand total of one story, which I sent off to a market fairly soon after. I'm not actively looking for critiques for the story right now (but I may later depending on what happens at that market). Since critiquing other people's stories would cause those other people to critique that story, I've been totally unmotivated to do any critiquing at OWW.

Of course, if I'm not looking for critiques on that story, what I should do is take that story off the site. That way, I could keep racking up points for submitting stories without wasting other people's time. However, I never got around to doing that. This is totally me not using the system correctly. It's not any issue with OWW.

Amusingly, I got an e-mail a few days ago telling me not to take my story down because it is a nominee for an Editor's Choice. The body of the e-mail makes it sound like my story is not just a nominee but Editor's Choice proper. So now I can't take it down. But, OTOH, a pro will critique my story. That's always a good thing.

I have no idea what qualifies a story to be an Editor's Choice. I assume it contains a teachable moment or two. Either way, I'm looking forward to the critique.