Intro!

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

Um, hello, I just joined; I hope that's OK!
I've been writing some short fiction recently, and am quite keen to get constructive criticism and so on on it, and itsjustaname suggested this might be a good place to do it. I wanted to ask, though, whether it's OK to make locked posts on this community? I'm hoping to get some of my stuff published at some point (it may be a vain hope, mind you!), so I'd rather not post it publicly. If I can post it locked, though, I'd be very glad to get opinions on it!

Also, just out of interest, what sort of genres do people here write in, or do you just avoid genres altogether?
I'm really not sure what my genre is, or whether I have on. The last two stories I've written are a short (2,000 word) one which is either a romance or a psychological horror, depending who you ask, and a longer (currently 9,500 words, but it needs some fairly vicious editing) one which is sort of a metaphysical detective story, only not. Works in progress include a sort of philosophical magic realism thing, and an actual honest-to-god sci-fi thing. Possibly. If they ever get finished. :-)

Finally, I'm fairly new to writing, and one of the things I'm finding a bit of a struggle is plot; I'm OK with characters and situations, but arranging them into plots can sometimes take me a while. Where do your storylines come from, and how do you put them together? Do you write out notes outlining your plot before you actually write? Or do you start writing into the void, and hope the ending will turn up when it's needed?