looking for some feedback

[negentropy]

hi, i've been writing for a couple years -- "psychedelic" fantasy and science fiction, for the most part -- and i just set up a website for my writing to sit there and look all pretty. it's at http://way.to/elsewhere .

most of the stuff on it is at least a year out of date, because i wanted the site to be a place where i could show all my writing (heh... all the writing i don't despise, anyway). but obviously, any feedback on what i've done in the past will be really helpful to what i write in the present and future.

i've got a story (two, actually, but one of them i wrote nearly four years ago) up on this webpage, at http://www.sffworld.com/authors/h/hazelbower_martin/fiction/glory1.html , but they gibbled the formatting, and put a bunch of paragraph breaks where there should be no paragraph breaks. so it would probably be less eyebleeding to just go to my site.

thanks for reading, and for any help you decide to give.

martin

[negentropy]

please?

[kater]

Ok, its an intelligent story with strong description, however this description is my main problem, overly long description or intelligent rambling for the sake of intelligent rambling really irritates me, if you have something to say be concise and move the narrative along, don't dwell otherwise the reader imo gets bored quickly. The story lacks direction at the start, there is leeway at the beginning of a story to establish character but its not really needed for a short story. Make it snappier, avoid wallowing in description and try not to make your story seem so academic.

[negentropy]

thanks... that's exactly what i'm looking for.
i kind of get lost in a thicket of description, yeah. i'm still looking for a decent balance between too much and not enough.
i totally agree that the beginning drifts, too. i just wasn't sure where to take it when i was starting out. it could do with a big edit to fix the structural problems. i rarely edit to do more than polish the surface.
i think the basic problem is that the ideas i had weren't very connected, and i had to establish all these bridges of pseudo-logic between them to get it to make any coherent sense. that's the source of at least some of the rambling.
i certainly wasn't trying to make it seem academic -- i was trying to show how wonderful this aspect of the "academic" can be, if you've got the right set of eyes. doubt i did it right, though. higher math and eastern philosophy are tricky to put together.
i'd go over it again, but i finished it like six months ago, and i'd rather work on the new stuff i'm doing now.
your thoughts were really helpful.