Well hello there China’s!! (See Rikki Fulton – I’ve mentioned him before)
Here we are at Week 538 – These posts are fair drawin’ in. As it is after the 21st of June, which was the Summer Solstice here, that means that the days are getting shorter which really has fuck all to do with the post!! I just like the phrase!!
All I know about the Solstice is ‘The Wicker Man’…Which may have had sod all to do with The Solstice. I can only remember a few things about Britt Eckland or her body double – I didn’t care!!
I’ve not watched the remake with Nicholas Cage but surely no-one could sing as bad as Edward Woodward????
I’d ban a few hymns – ‘The Lord’s My Shepherd’, ‘The Old Rugged Cross’ and ‘Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam’ – All religious deid folks misery!!!
Leila mentioned in a post a few weeks back something about positive comments. I’d like to expand on that a tad. You see, myself, Diane and Leila are three totally different people. We have totally different experience and we write in totally different ways. That means that when we agree on a piece of work, we reckon that we have found something that wee bit special. So, when we get any negativity about it, we look at it as our overall view being a bit demeaned. To be fair, that doesn’t matter, as everyone is entitled to their own opinion. However, we take it a stage further with our thoughts for our writers. We protect them as much as we can. Diane is a multiple published authoress (HAH! See what I did there Diane) who knows a thing or two about research, actuality and inevitability. Leila is a wonderful imaginative writer who has knowledge of crossover, knowledge of American History and Social Comment. And, well, me – I can go dark and can spot with bells on when folks are only playing at that! All in all, I reckon we cover all bases. So when we get an insulting comment regarding a certain piece of work – It’s a slight on us. And more importantly, it is a slight on the writer who has impressed three very different people with very different preferences!
If we all sang to the same hymn tune on whatever we decided the content for Literally Stories, I reckon we could be criticised. But the only thing that myself, Diane, Tobias, Nik, Adam and now Leila champion, is excellent writing. Content is up for debate which we do daily.
Please don’t take this as arrogance. All I can say is we’ve read around 1400 stories. With that experience and our own individual traits, we do reckon we can spot what is relatable, inventive, realistic, clever, imaginative and simply out of the box weird, to be able to put together this Literally On-Line magazine. But tastes vary, so I’m not saying that anyone who disagrees with the quality of a story is wrong. All I’m saying is that one helluva mishmash of ideas and experiences have been used to accept, so maybe criticism isn’t the way to go?????
It was my birthday a few weeks back and my sis and brother-in-law included a case of Murphys. I hadn’t seen it for years. It made me smile. There were only two places in Ayr that sold it; The Elms Court and another place that I won’t sully myself by naming it or the landlord. It was in that establishment where my Brother-In-Law was talking to an English fellow who stated that you could only drink three pints. George laughed and asked the barmaid how many pints two of his pals drank and she said, ‘Fifteen’!!
I need to thank Leila for standing in for me last week. The soul had the lurgy and I can’t thank her enough.
I hope she ate the international food of the sick – Soup!!
Onto this week’s stories.
We had four new writers and Fred who has reached the century mark. Not yet though, his 95-100 will be showcased around Christmas.
We welcome all our new folks and as always our initial comments follow.
The week began with Arjun Shah and his first story for us entitled, ‘Please, Varanasi.’
‘This one is certainly grim!’
‘When you read this, you just know that a lot of effort was put into it.’
‘I found this quite mesmerising.’
‘Tiny Dancers’ was the story that was published on Tuesday. P A Farrell was the writer.
‘A very strange story.’
‘I wonder what the octopus was called?’
‘This is that bit different and unique that we are always on the look for.’
T H White was next up with, ‘Shadow.’
‘T H fooled me not once, but twice!’
‘This has been very well thought out.’
‘Shadow’ is well above all the other stories of this ilk that we have received.’
Fred Foote was next upon Thursday.
If anyone reading this hasn’t looked at any of Fred’s work, please do. He is a very versatile writer who is brave to the extreme with one of the strongest voices on the site.
‘A Beast Of Burden’ was his latest offering.
And we completed the week with, ‘Another Way To Do It’ by Stephen Silvester.
‘Different and well done.’
‘A skewed reality.’
‘This thoroughly entertains.’
That’s another week done and dusted.
I’m sorry, but at time of writing I’ve still to catch up on commenting on the site. I was tied up for the last week or so…Hopefully this will be a moot point as I will have got through them all (???)
Without looking, I’m more than sure that the comments are still coming in!!
Just before I let you hear a cracking piece of music, I’d like to share a line, that, by fuck, does it open debate.
I was watching a documentary about the SAS and there was a Scottish SAS Soldier who was asked this question:
What do you do when you see a thirteen year old with a rifle?
He never flinched, never thought about it and answered:
I only see the rifle!
And here we have what I think is my worst link ever…And there have been a few belters. You may have been more familiar with this tremendous Scottish group’s cover of ‘Word-Up’ but I give you this from ‘Gun’!!
I saw them at the old Hampden Park in 1990 when they supported ‘The Rolling Stones’ Mr Wyman was still with them!!
Image: soldier with a rifle, taking aim from Pixabay.com
Hello guys. Hugh has given me the nod to add this little note to the end of his post. My publisher is running a competition for writers of colour and minorities. It has an impressive judging panel and a really brilliant prize. Follow this link to find out more if you reckon you qualify. https://joffebooks.com/prize-2025
literally stories 
Hello Hugh
Excellent description of what are good and crap comments. We get so few of the latter that they really stand out.
Yes, you only see the gun! People soon learn that there’s a big difference between a Dirty Harry (still very good entertaiment) and life.
Also, thank you Diane for spreading the good word.
Leila
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Hi Leila,
Thanks as always for the support.
Crap comments are only acceptable if you have the guts to say them to someones face. In this hide behind typing world, that is a discipline that is lost!!
And yep, ‘Dirty Harry’ is still a fall-back of mine!!
All the very best.
Hugh
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Hi Hugh
I think it does reflect on the editors if a story gets some kind of negative comment. After all if you champion a writer and some critical soul fires or (snipes away) this could be a surrogate attack on you as well.
Myself I try to avoid the negative. Writing is not an easy thing to do and it takes courage to put your work out there. Then in the rough hands of Jack wagon it may discourage the fledgling writer, or forge a fierce determination to overcome.
On here I’ve figured out who my friends are and the ones that aren’t friendly toward my work, or totally ignore it. I step away from them and usually don’t follow their work, either. The politics of human nature.
After something is published, which is a big time kudos in itself, I’ve learned that you can’t convince people to like your writing… Nothing really can be said to change this fact, but when they do…
I say THANK YOU for the positive comments that are like little pieces of gold flickering in a stream.
Christopher
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Hi Christopher,
Well summed up.
Every year or so we do pick up the odd piece of negativity. I think the worst one that I read was when, within the round-up, I had congratulated someone on the number of successful submissions they had!! Someone took great offence to this and stated that I was doing a disservice to other writers.
Only jealousy can be attributed to that type of comment!!
Thanks as always my fine friend.
Hugh
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I was reading an interesting article yesterday. It was published by the Society of Authors and was geared to helping writers manage to stay mentally healthy and to give pointers about how best to interact with other people in the industry. It was useful. Of course it covered the issue of reviews and this point made sense to me. When you have a positive review it makes you feel happy – of course it does, but a negative review stays with you longer. I know this to be true. Now according to the psychologist who wrote that part of the article it is all hard wired into our brains. Negative things that upset or worry us get more attention because they are a threat and therefore we can’t help but take more notice of them. Little Bambi – awww cute – Big tiger – aaaaagh run and keep running!
I think that makes sense. I don’t give negative reviews on published work. I think it’s mean. The work is out there, nothing can be done. Even if it’s changed it has been in the public eye and why would you want to make someone feel bad just so you can express a personal opinion. If it’s something fixable I think by all means, privately and kindly mention it but otherwise you can’t go far wrong with ‘if you can’s say something nice, don’t say anything.’
Good post Hugh and thanks again Leila for fighting through the fug of the lurgy to step in last weel. dd
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Hi Diane,
I remember discussing how insular writing can be with Nik and as an off-shoot of that, positive interaction may counter-balance. And hopefully negativity is at a minimum!!
Writers probably spend more time in the worlds that they have created than anywhere else, so I reckon that anyone who does this for any length of time is very strong!!!
Thanks as always!!!
Hugh
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Hi, Hugh!
Everything you’ve said here makes perfect sense to me and none of it seems arrogant at all, not in the least. It seems, instead, simply HONEST and a clear, well-written description of the general process that goes on behind the scenes with the Literally Editors – as well as your well-earned, clearly stated, and convincing opinion about the random nay-sayers who feel compelled to attack another person’s work, maybe from a sense of missing self esteem, maybe from a misplaced sense of artistic judgement, and perhaps more likely from being a cranky and ill-tempered person in general at least much of the time.
In the old days, it was expected that anyone who would “speak” in “print” should have qualifications to do so ahead of time. Like if you were a reporter telling a journalistic story, you were supposed to have been there, or at least gotten the straight scoop from someone else. Or if you were a classical music critic, you were supposed to have a deep, hard-earned knowledge of classical music. Or if you were a political commentator, you were supposed to have studied history before you opened your mouth.
I’ve noticed that in our world today, A LOT OF PEOPLE, AND TOO MANY PEOPLE for my liking seem to fancy themselves complete experts on topics they have little, or even NO, knowledge of.
Having knowledge of a thing is no longer required for an individual to feel entitled to speak upon it. Partial knowledge or almost no knowledge is more than enough for some people. And oftentimes the people who know the least are the ones speaking the loudest. (That last sentence even translates into presidential levels.)
Also, TOO MANY PEOPLE “speak” (or write) without thinking about it first.
I’ve noticed in the past that some of the smartest people I’ve ever known wait entire worlds of time before answering questions that are asked of them. This is because they’re thinking about what they want to say before they say it.
The less intelligent among us often have much quicker mouths (again, presidential)…
I really enjoyed this post about posting, and editing. And, it makes perfect sense to me!
Dale
PS
My guess is that many Literally readers enjoy reading about what goes on behind the scenes with the editorial process…Do more in the future Hugh, great topic!
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Hi Dale,
Thanks as always for your support and intelligent observations.
It’s interesting what you say about folks not knowing. I think this can cross over to the written word when ‘Celebrities’ or ‘God forbid’, reality stars dip their toes into the written word. I know that there will be exceptions but maybe the rule of thumb is more than likely, if it’s good, it’s by a ghost writer, if it’s bad, they wrote it themselves!!!
I try and put relevant content into the posts about our process and what we look for. If we get a glut of work with the same topic or topics that struggle, I try to point this out.
However, I must admit, I’m a sucker for a tangent and that happens…A lot!!!
Thanks again my fine friend.
Hugh
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A don’t see the point in making negative comments. Maybe commenters are trying to get back at the editors for a rejection and /or make themselves feel better? Makes no sense in either case. I will say that years ago I followed a now-defunct online journal, and a commenter critiqued every story. His observations weren’t always kind, but they were fair and insightful and I often learned from them. Great coordination of the banner image, quote about the gun-toting child and the video.
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Hi Dave,
You have a point. I reckon I’ve had a few bits of negativity specifically aimed at me. But I’ve a thick skin…My gran worked on that!!
I’ll let you into a secret. If someone asks for feedback and none of us have enjoyed the story – That is the hardest thing to do. We will be truthful but won’t be harsh about it. We choose our words carefully as none of us would forgive ourselves if we discouraged.
I had a tutor who gave this example.
‘If they can’t spell, can’t form a sentence, have no grammar or punctuation skills…Compliment them on their hand- writing…Whether it’s terrible or not!!!’
I think that is a fair way to be!!!
Thanks as always my fine friend.
Hugh
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Good grief!!! 1400 stories!!! I salute you.
Agree with all the earlier responses concerning negative comments, especially Diane’s point about the negative review staying with you longer. I can recall with complete clarity a very negative comment I received several years ago on a piece I’d published in another online journal. I was stung to reply, even though I knew it would be wiser to turn the page. Since most of us just write for enjoyment and published comments are just a welcome afterglow, a negative review can be utterly undermining. mick
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Hi Mick,
It’s always a pleasure!!
Yep, just checked in case I was exaggerating. We have published 3027 stries from the figure on the site and within our system we 11 963 rejections. That doesn’t include any that have been withdrawn or accepted elsewhere so it is a fair number we have got through.
I think my reaction to any negativity isn’t always balanced as it’s probably more to do with the mood I’m in at that particular time. I can either laugh and ignore it or I can get pissed off. (HAH! I wouldn’t want to work out that ratio!!!)
Thanks as always my fine friend – I hope everything is well with you.
Hugh
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Hey Hugh
Murphy’s was my ideological favorite. Cost wise, too. But that’s another matter.
When my first story appeared in LS, I wasn’t even savvy enough to comment on the comments. Then I noticed a pervasive culture of support. I came, and come from, a workshop environment. Shit sandwiches were everything: the bitter truth served betwixt a couple of completements. ‘How can we make this better?’ was the mantra.
I took Leila for my model. I used the author’s name in each comment, pointed out what was great about each story. What wasn’t, if anything, I gave a pass. After all, the story was just published in Literally Stories! — Gerry
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Hi Gerry,
Caphrey’s also did the rounds at that time. I could drink it but thought it a bit bland. There was another Scottish Malt Lager called ‘Gillespies’ it was lovely but I haven’t seen that for years.
It’s brave to throw your first few comments out there but once you get into it, you realise how beneficial it is. I’ve thought on a few stories and many a posting due to comments.
Thanks as always my fine friend, your support means a lot to us.
Hugh
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This offered good insight into your editorial process. As I keep saying, thanks for what you do! I enjoy the stories and the place to interact with other writers.
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Hi Kayla,
You have added another voice and that is all good!! And lets not forget your work!!!!
Keep it going and you will get more and more out of this!!!! Comments make you think and whether you are giving or receiving – They inspire!!
Don’t just look forward, look back and see what we have previous published, you will be in for a treat.
Thanks for the comments and all the very best.
Hugh
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