Pittsburgh Worldwrights

• April 99: Barton Paul Levenson's review of "The Dream Millenium" by James White appeared in The New York Review of Science Fiction #128, April 1999.... Mary Soon Lee sold two stories -- "Tranquillity" and "Lifework" -- to Interzone; she also sold reprint rights to "Silent in the Cities" to Papyrus.... Timon Esaias's poem "Heisenberg Haiku" was published in the May 1999 Asimov's, and his story "Norbert et la Systeme" was reprinted in the French magazine Galaxies #11, Winter 98-99 (this story first appeared in Interzone #73, July 1993)..... Former Worldwright Paul Melko sold his short story "Death of the Egg King" to Talebones for issue #16.
• March 99: Mary Soon Lee's story "Luna Incognita" appeared in Amazing Stories #596, Spring 1999; she sold reprint rights to her stories "Universal Grammar" and "Ex Terra, Ex Astris" (both first published in F&SF;) to the Dutch magazine Visionair; she also sold "The Turtle God" to Tales of the Unanticipated; and her short-short "Courtly Love" appeared in Transversions #10.... Timons Esaias's story "The Mars Convention" has a Hugo recommendation on the NESFA website.

Additional information

• Who are the Worldwrights?
• The workshop's format.
• How do I find out about SF/F/H markets? (part of the speculative fiction page).
• Market response times.
• The pros and cons of workshops.
• For the brave and the bored, a short Worldwrights quiz.
• Read the Worldwrights! (links to stories by the Worldwrights)
• Joining the Worldwrights
• Other writer's groups

The Individual Worldwrights

John Leavitt
Mary Soon Lee
Barton Paul Levenson
James Thomas

The remaining Worldwrights are Flonet Biltgen (to whom we owe both our name and the design of our logo), Ken Chiacchia, Tim Esaias, Chris Ferrier, William Hall, and Elizabeth Penrose.

Workshop Format

People hand out copies of their stories to everyone else to take home. Between meetings, members critique the stories, marking line edits and writing down overall comments. At the next meeting, we go round in a circle with each reader in turn giving their reaction to the story. During this process everyone else, including the author, tries to remain quiet. Once everyone has given their opinion, the author can ask questions and people can add any further remarks. Then we proceed to the next story.

We also exchange market information, chat, eat ice cream and potato chips and candy, and generally have a good time.

Market Response Times

To workshop, or not to workshop?

• Workshops provide much-needed feedback on your stories. Not every comment will be helpful to you, but the critiquing should allow you to see your prose more objectively. You can also learn a great deal from critiquing other people's stories.
• Writing is a lonely pursuit; workshops provide contact with other people (often very friendly people!) who are struggling with the same problems.
• You can exchange market news, magazine response times, discuss the pros and cons of cover letters...
• Workshops encourage productivity. At least, this is true for me. When I would otherwise be tempted to take a day off, I often write a story to meet the next workshop deadline.

• "The other writers will steal my ideas." If this worries you, then you definitely shouldn't be in a workshop. If you get a dozen writers to write a story based on the same idea, you will typically get a dozen very, very different stories. Some ideas *are* better than others, but almost all of them have been used before anyway. The trick is to learn how to take a good idea and turn it into a good story--learn how to craft your prose, how to create three-dimensional characters, how to evoke a scene in a couple of phrases. A workshop should be a stimulating environment where ideas meet and mutate in a thousand interesting ways.
• Negative critiques hurt. There is a difference between constructive criticism and viciousness, and the latter is inappropriate. But even constructive criticism can hurt, especially if in some dark corner of your mind you know that the critiquer is correct. Remember that rejections hurt too! If you can learn to grin and bear it while your work is critiqued, then you will be able to improve your stories before they reach an editor's desk. If you find it tough to receive critiques then I recommend only taking in completed stories. I have seen several people abandon novels part-way through because of negative feedback. It is much easier to revise a completed manuscript than it is to continue one once you are discouraged.

Worldwrights Quiz

1. Years from now, the PWs are at a science fiction convention, and two PWs who have suddenly discovered an intense romantic interest in one another -- no, I won't say who -- are making out in the con suite. Suddenly, Barton Levenson walks in on them. What has just occurred? Answer.
2. What does one really cool Wurrayna say to another at a party? (Warning: will be baffling to anyone but a Worldwright.) Answer.
3. Flonet waited till no co-workers were watching, then tried on the helmet. At once she was trillions of light-years away, High Priestess of the Five Galaxies Confederation. Every day she made life-and-death decisions for millions of worlds.

   Flash. She was a small, quivering fox-like creature, a galley-slave in the feudal Twancrian empire. Here was no honor, no courtiers to hang on her every word, only endless, mindless work for the huge, blue, hippo-like Overlords.

   Flash. She was a merchant space pilot, a dealer in VR disks and algorithms along the Finger Nebula route, willing to fly where the Patrol feared to tread in search of a quick profit.

   Flonet took off the helmet, never wanting to use the weird alien mechanism again. She had always hated .... Answer.

4. Marked copies of Bill's novel, ``Saidiya,'' (pronounced Sigh-dee-uh) are found without signatures. What's the best question to ask the group? Answer.

Read the Worldwrights!

• "Luna Incognita" is in Amazing Stories #596, Spring 99.
• "Courtly Love" by Mary Soon Lee in Transversions #10, March 99.
• "Slush" by Mary Soon Lee is in Pirate Writings #17, February 99.
• A revised version of "Ebb Tide" (F&SF;, May 1995) by Mary Soon Lee is in the first SFF Net anthology, "Between the Darkness and the Fire," August 1998, ISBN 1-880448-56-4, edited by Jeffry Dwight.
• "Tending Mirror" by Timons Esaias in The Leading Edge #35, April 98.
• "Norbert and the System" by Timons Esaias in The Best of Interzone, edited by David Pringle, published by St. Martin's Press, ISBN 0-312-15063-6, $24.95, March 97.

• The God on the Glass Cross by Mary Soon Lee in Galaxy, February 99.
• To Answer Your Question: Dearest Nephew by Timons Esaias in Anotherealm, October 98.
• "The Anthropic Principle and Its Uncertainty or A Copenhagen Misinterpretation" by Timons Esaias in E-Scape #9, August 98.
• Seeing Deeper by Mary Soon Lee, first published in Thirteenth Moon, available from Mind's Eye Fiction (which charges between 16 and 24 cents for the second half of the story).
• Voices in the Wind by Mary Soon Lee, available from Mind's Eye Fiction (which charges between 16 and 24 cents for the second half of the story).
• Not strictly a story, but.... Timons Esaias's satire columns are appearing in the Internet Daily News.

Joining the Worldwrights

First the bad news. We limit membership in the Worldwrights to ten members, and we are currently full. We have a lengthy waiting-list and a very low turnover of members -- it could take many years to work our way through the existing waiting-list. But if you wish to be added to the waiting-list despite this, please e-mail Mary Soon Lee at mslee@cs.cmu.edu.

Now the good news. Diane Turnshek has formed a new workshop called Write or Die in the Pittsburgh area, and there is now also a third workshop called the Pittsburgh South Writes.... I also recommend PARSEC, a Pittsburgh science fiction club with monthly meetings. PARSEC organizes Confluence, an annual science fiction convention, which I heartily recommend.

Other Writer's Groups

• Critters, an online workshop.
• Inkspot's list of writer's groups.
• Write or Die, another Pittsburgh workshop.
• Pittsburgh South Writes, and another Pittsburgh workshop.