| A letter to the
reader - January 2nd 2005 ________ Michael Graeme |
Dear Reader, The Rivendale Review began in October 1999 as both an educational exercise, and as a home for some of my short fiction. Most of it was printed several years ago and has long since disappeared from public circulation, so the site has provided a way of reviewing some of this work. But there are other stories, including two novels that have done the rounds and failed to find a home, stories I still felt were interesting and worth reviewing, so they too have found a home here. However, there's always a danger in creating a site like this of becoming too self-absorbed and of posting any old rubbish simply because I can. I hope I've avoided that particular trap and I hope also you'll let me know if you disagree. I've been studying on-line fiction for as long as I've been running this site and I've come to a number of conclusions: 1) If you are a writer - especially a relatively unknown one like me, it's worth having a website. All writers have a welter of stories, novels, poems and essays lurking in a drawer somewhere, work read only by themselves, a handful of un-enthusiatic editors and perhaps their partners. This work is better on-line where someone may chance upon it and spend a while reading it. That's got to be better than gathering dust in a drawer where it may as well never have been written. 2) Having set up a site - don't be fooled: publishers don't browse the internet on the lookout for new talent - they don't need to. It's always been a buyer's market and I'm afraid writers are a bit like buses - there's no point in chasing one because there'll always be another along in a minute. 3) For all its potential the internet will not kill off the printed word. Reading from a CRT is a pain and you still need a lot of technology, plus batteries, to make it portable. That technology is available but it's beyond the means and the patience of the book buying, library browsing public. If you're serious about your writing, keep submitting it. Only when you tire of a piece and want to move on, put it in your on-line drawer - your website. 4) On-line publishers pay next to nothing. Some pay nothing at all. I sold a story five years ago that took months of writing and fine tuning - all for $9.00 - about the price of a haircut. Exposure of one's work is the only reason for perservering and only then if the site in question has a good hit rate. In my case, the story has yet to appear and I've yet to be paid. If you're a writer, you're as well publishing it yourself on your own site. $9.00 dollars really isn't worth the hassle, or the wait. 5) There's a lot of fiction about on the internet, most of it free, most of it dire and some of it very rude indeed. But there are enough gems to make the digging still worthwhile and if you should come across a piece you like, then make someone's day and let the author know. ................ Good reading! Michael Graeme May 2001 |