Blog: Featured work: street of the candlesticks
It's been a pleasure watching bell's Street of the candlesticks evolve in Pool. She observes a little slice of life each day of the week from the her window sill overlooking an alley.
Pool producer John was the first to comment. He wrote, "I really enjoyed reading your seven window box vignettes. Each one alive with curiosity and tinged with complexity". He suggested she add a photo to her writing. Community member Winston added a great Pool tip about the importance of adding an image with your work:
"To help others find your work in The Pool (sometimes this is very hard) could I suggest that you find any photo from anywhere to add to the upload, so that a reader's eye is attracted to your piece in the 'Related work by other contributors' section of the side bar...Even if you just make a *.jpg of your story title with a little subtitle, and put that in as the image, it will draw the eye and let people see your work."
Next City Nights producer Gretchen added some detailed editorial feedback. "I really love the writing too - it's very evocative, full of character (including the writer's) despite the shortness of each episode - and yes, the episodic nature of it works beautifully. Seven little stories from one little australian... great."
bell played around with Gretchen's suggestions, then wrote, "Gretchen, thanks so much for your advice with this piece. I did notice the repetition of vocab and meant to go back and clean it up, so thanks for reminding me! And you're so right about the 'lilting into the Flemish night' line: it doesn't suit the style of this piece as it came from another story about Brussels, and I added it on. This works much better without it, I think."
To follow the whole thread of comments, click here.
Sharing a story and commenting are great ways to contribute to Pool, but it can also be about listening, reading, watching, or following the thread of a conversation in the forums.
Please feel free to comment on this blog post as we always love to hear your thought. Log-in to Pool and you'll see a comment box below this post. If you're not a member, take a moment to join Pool first.
Comments
4 comments
10.07.09 — jhollinger
I can't wait for Pool to get it's 'goggles' on. I agree blogging on the home page of this site will help the Pool community immensely. This site has so much good content and doing this would only make it more accessible. Great idea Winston.
03.06.09 — bell
Thank you for featuring this, it's such a wonderful surprise. I'm really enjoying the process of posting and finetuning my work within this community, and look forward to posting more of my stories. Never thought I'd see a photo of mine on the homepage though! Reading through the work of other members is also immensely rewarding.....looking forward to 'a Pool with goggles'!
03.06.09 — Winston
Thanks Pool Team,
what a great idea to bring the process of drafting, refining and republishing of a great story to the Home Page so that visitors can see what's going on here. It's fascinating to see works-in-progress just get better with guidance from you guys.
Winston
03.06.09 — Pool team
Thanks Winston! I was just about to write to you to let you know we'd brought that great discussion (and piece of writing) to the front. Blogging on the home page is one small way we can help people find great things in Pool. The re-design we're going through at the moment should really address this though. Fingers crossed for Pool version 2 where it's really easy to find things - a Pool with goggles : )
- Kate, Pool team