Old Friends And New Energy

So good to get back into the writing world! Not only am I writing, thinking about writing, and submitting again (not to mention maintaining this blog), I’ve also rediscovered my unparalleled online writing group Codex.

Codex was founded years ago by my excellent WotF 2004 roommate Luc Reid and is now an active, energetic, stimulating online community of cutting-edge neo-pro* speculative fiction writers. Market information, reciprocal critiquing, discussions about all aspects of writing, a place to cheer successes and lament rejections, and even ‘Codex Prime’, a soon-to-be-published anthology of short stories by Codexians! (Unfortunately, my rediscovery of this wonderful resource was 9 days after the deadline for the anthology, but there’s always ‘Codex Secundus’…)

As for the critiquing: I’ve been using Critters for a few months, and though that’s a well-organized and active online critiquing circle, I suspect I’m better off at Codex. It was nice to receive a ton of praise from Critters for the story I submitted (Prisoner of war), but I’m sure the Codexians would have found reasons to tear it to pieces, and that’s much more valuable critique…

* neo-pro = in the transition phase between writing as a hopeful hobby and writing as a professional (payed) endeavour.