(no subject)

[intothewood]

Sharing. When do you determine who, when and how?

I'm very wary of sharing any of my writing beyond silly little things I care nothing about. It's like a native fear of picture taking - if they see it, they will steal my soul!

But there are precautions in sharing, especially things you're currently working on - or at least I think so, anyway. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I can't imagine I'm the only one who feels this way. Of course, I am a little extreme - I can't seem to let go of even one sentence. I was going to ask people to share a sentence from what they're currently writing, something that may sum up the gist of the story, but I don't know if I could reciprocate. Yes, yes, that is paranoid, isn't it. But I don't know you, you don't know me... we could all be soul stealers, who can say?

So how do you know when to share, with whom, and at what stage?

Comments

[smw]

I don't publish online anything that I intend to peddle in professional markets, and I can be very shy showing my work to someone whose opinion I value if I'm uncertain about their reaction.

Other than that? I believe the soul of my work is in the gestalt, not the parts, and that no one could steal that without literally abducting me to write something for them; as you can see by my journal, my short fiction is public.

[niniane]

Like SMW, I don't put anything online (and unlocked) that I intend to publish, as that gets into legal issues.

Beyond that, I share stories typically with betas and critique groups once I think they're about as clean as I can (reasonably) get them. I try to publish once things are nearly perfect - i.e. they've gone through a round or two of critiques, plus I've cleaned them up a lot after the last critique. If someone wants to see what I have, I usually share whatever it is, in any stage. But I write a lot, so out of politeness, I usually try to share only the non-gibberish stuff, unless I'm stuck and asking for advice. (Which happens, sometimes.)

I'm definitely happy to rip sentences out of stories and post just for fun. *shrugs* I'm pretty insensitive, I think.