Olga Godim's Blog, page 33

Scarlet Sails – chapter 3 on Wattpad

I posted Chapter 3 of my translation of Scarlet Sails, a novella by Alexander Grin, on Wattpad. You can read it here.

Two girls switched at birth

In 2013, I published a novel Lost and Found in Russia about 2 babies switched at birth and one mother’s search for her biological daughter 30 years later. Little did I know such cases sometimes happen in real life.��Here is the news report about one real case of 2 girls switched at birth, just like in my novel.

Life and fiction intermix!

 

Scarlet Sails – chapter 2 on Wattpad

I posted the second chapter of my translation of Scarlet Sails, a novella by Alexander Grin, on Wattpad. You can read it here.

Love poem in 25 words

I participated in a love poetry contest on Audra Middleton’s website ��� to write a love poem in 25 words or less. Here���s my entry: http://www.audramiddleton.com/monthly-blog/love-poem-challenge-olga-godim

Please, read, enjoy, comment.

 

Count your Likes

A post for the Insecure Writer���s Support Group

Some time ago, I interviewed a local photographer for my newspaper article. Four of her photographs won a contest recently. As a result, they were displayed on billboards along Canadian highways and bridges in December 2014 and January 2015. I asked her how the winner was selected, and she said that according to the contest organizers, the images that got the most Likes and Favorites on Facebook and Twitter won.

���I mobilized all my friends and family,��� she joked, ���and they in turn mobilized theirs. I realize, of course, that winning this way has nothing to do with the artistic merits of the art and everything to do with who gets a better marketing strategy and a wider network.��� Still she was happy with her win and didn���t dispute it.

I don���t dispute it either. I think she is an amazing photographer, but her story started me thinking. Lately, many literary contests of novels, short stories, or book covers have been selecting their winners the same way. Even big publishers do that. They accept for publication the manuscripts that win most LIkes on some social network instead of the traditional way: what the editors consider worthy. I suspect that winning in such cases also doesn���t have much to do with the artistic merits of the work. The more people a writer could incite to vote for him, the better his chances of victory.

Sometimes I find posts in groups I belong to with the almost identical wording: ���I entered a contest such-and-such. Please vote for me.��� The link is usually provided below. Nobody expects me to vote for what I like, but for whom I know. And people do vote for their online buddies, without even familiarizing themselves first with what they���re voting for.

What chance do I, as a writer, have of winning any contest, if I don���t have a wide network of online friends or an internet-savvy family? None, I suppose. The quality of my writing doesn���t matter. The number of my followers does.

It���s a sad world.

Do you like my post? Press the Like button.

 

 

Scarlet Sails on Wattpad

I finally posted the first chapter of my translation of Scarlet Sails on Wattpad. Scarlet Sails is a novella by the Russian writer Alexander Grin. It was one of my favorite books, when I grew up in Russia, and I wanted to share it with my English-speaking friends.

First published in 1923, it’s a lyrical and romantic tale about the power of dreams. I hope my translation conveys at least partly the original beauty of this charming and unique story.

You can read it here.

The next chapter is coming soon…

Cover unification project

A post for the Insecure Writer���s Support Group

I recently read The Rosie Effect, a novel by Graeme Simsion. Its hero Don has Asperger syndrome, a psychological condition that makes it necessary for him to have a very orderly life: all activities are scheduled, all chores belong to the prearranged to-do lists, all meals adhere to the weekly menus (orange juice on Fridays), etc.

I have Asperger too, although to a lesser degree than Don. I crave order in my life as well, and this craving pushed me into an interesting writing-related project.

Over the last few years, more than a dozen of my short stories were published in various magazines. As I retain the rights to these stories, I decided to make them available to my readers on Wattpad, where each story can have its own cover. I scoured the Internet for the best free images and created a cover for each story.

After I posted all the stories on Wattpad, I looked at their covers, and a doubting worm started squirming in my head. The covers looked too different, the fonts and styles all over the place. To satisfy my Asperger-driven need for order, I decided to change all the covers, to make them conform to a certain stylistic standard. Simultaneously, such a uniformity would create my own ���writer���s brand��� on Wattpad, at least in theory.

I reused the same images as before but I designed the covers differently. On all the new covers, the title is below the image, the author���s name above the image, and all the covers have a frame. I used the same font for the author���s name everywhere and another font for the titles.

The covers still look ���home-made���. It���s clear no professional artists or cover designer has ever touched them, but at least they are unique, exclusively mine. Nobody���s covers look like them. Is it bad? Is it okay? Did I go overboard with this project? Should the covers have more of a variety? After all, the stories don���t belong to the same series or even to the same genre. Should the covers have a distinctive professional quality? After all, I���m not selling them.

To judge, you can see all the covers on my special board on Pinterest.

For those curious enough to read, the stories themselves are here.

Wattpad and I

I finally finished transferring all my published short stories, 14 so far, to Wattpad. The last to go was the fantasy story Magic, Sword… and Turnips (read it here).

My new bunch of short stories are on submission, floating in cyberspace. There are currently 4 of them, all fantasy. I also have ideas for a couple more, but maybe I should stop writing short stories for a while and concentrate on novels.

My next project on Wattpad: I want to transfer there my translation of Alexander Grin’s novella Scarlet Sails. It was originally published in Russian in 1923, so its copyright has expired. I want to offer it to the English-language readers. It’s a beautiful story, romantic and charming.

I’m an EPIC competition finalist – twice

In the summer 2014, I entered both of my fantasy novels, Almost Adept and Eagle En Garde, into the EPIC competition. I just got an email saying they both made finalists in the Fantasy category. Although neither won, I feel like celebrating. I have the right now to display their charming silver badge – twice.

 

I also got pretty certificates with my name, the titles, and book covers but I won’t display them here.

Complete or not complete: that���s the question

A post for the Insecure Writer���s Support Group

Recently, I submitted a short story to a magazine, and it got rejected. No surprise there, it happens to every writer. What was a surprise was the reason for the rejection. The usual rejection is worded something like: ���Thank you for submitting your story to us. Unfortunately, that���s not what we are looking for at the moment.��� Instead, my rejection email stated that the editor liked the story but thought it was incomplete. ���Next time send a complete story,��� she said.

I was puzzled. I was sure it was complete. I didn���t try a cliffhanger. In the beginning of the story, I promised to deliver my heroine from point A to point B, and I did. Of course, she has to figure out where to go from point B, but that���s another story entirely. Or so I thought.

I asked some friends to read the story and comment whether or not it was complete. I was sure they would side with me and say that the story was complete. It didn���t happen. Everyone who read the story said: ���Yeah, interesting story, but I���d like to know more about the characters. Did they find xxxx? Did they reach yyyy? What happened next?���

Obviously, if several people say the story is not finished, it is not. I have to think up another ending. I must continue the story, and I have nothing against that. I know when happened to the characters next. But why didn���t I see it myself?

There is another quandary too. The story is long as it is, over 8000 words already. If I continue the way it deserves, it would stop being a short story. Should I try to make it a novella? Or should I just attach a slap-dash ending ��� another page or so ��� and call it ���done���?

Do other writers wrestle with such questions? Has it ever happened to you? How do you solve such problems? What constitutes an ending everyone agrees upon?