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Weekly Writing Group
Kamar
AntivillainIn The BasementRegistered User regular
AntivillainIn The BasementRegistered User regular
So I tossed the idea of a weekly or biweekly writing group out in chat and IRC and got some positive replies, so here's a thread to consider it in a bit more detail.
Just as a rough idea, I figure we would be best served by picking a specific day and time, and a specific minimum (and maximum) word count (non-prose could use some other metric) for each person to submit per meeting. Google Docs seems like a good tool for this--everyone can look at the document, chat about it with the sidebar chat thing, highlight and add notes, whatever.
Personally, I'm not looking for line-editors or grammar commentary. 'You're using too many said-bookisms', sure. But anything more specific is probably a waste--focusing on the story itself if more important. You can fix grammar and prose in post a lot easier than a broken plot. Obviously if everyone else feels differently, we can cover grammar and prose too.
Anyone interested should toss out a rough idea of when/how much they'd like to do this.
Time: Any, weekly
Word Count: 5-10k each if reading in advance (commentary would always be on the last week's submissions to give time for reading). 2-5k otherwise.
Maximum Members: 7 (much more than that would get difficult to read
My Genres / formats: Fantasy, Space Opera / novels and webserials
Just as a rough idea, I figure we would be best served by picking a specific day and time, and a specific minimum (and maximum) word count (non-prose could use some other metric) for each person to submit per meeting. Google Docs seems like a good tool for this--everyone can look at the document, chat about it with the sidebar chat thing, highlight and add notes, whatever.
Personally, I'm not looking for line-editors or grammar commentary. 'You're using too many said-bookisms', sure. But anything more specific is probably a waste--focusing on the story itself if more important. You can fix grammar and prose in post a lot easier than a broken plot. Obviously if everyone else feels differently, we can cover grammar and prose too.
Anyone interested should toss out a rough idea of when/how much they'd like to do this.
Time: Any, weekly
Word Count: 5-10k each if reading in advance (commentary would always be on the last week's submissions to give time for reading). 2-5k otherwise.
Maximum Members: 7 (much more than that would get difficult to read
My Genres / formats: Fantasy, Space Opera / novels and webserials
Kamar on
Posts
I can do any time between Wednesday-Saturday fairly reliably, but Wednesday and Thursday are definitely the best.
My Writing Genres: Contemporary Fantasy
Sorry, just a bit confused.
I think posting the work to be critiqued a week before is really the best. It's the only way to actually give people enough time to read and form accurate responses to things.
If we're going to be setting a day/time for this when it gets rolling, I vote that we meetup once a week on Skype to talk about the stories as a group. The stories for critique could be posted either on google docs or google groups or something.
Anyone have a problem with Saturdays, at 8:00 pm CST?
and while we figure that out I've already created a Google group to share the stories in; pm me your Google-linked email address and I'll add you.
Oh, and obviously most TWB rules apply. No fanfic, don't plagiarize, you own your submissions, obvious things like that. I guess we can go slightly smuttier than TWB if need be, but let's not overdo it.
Last thing, don't PM me if you haven't talked to me elsewhere; either in the IRC, chat thread, or here.
I would recommend starting with a decent chunk of the beginning for any longer work you're a good ways into--then, you can either jump ahead, continue through, or post something different (a lot of problems with a story will present themselves early). Just remember to keep writing even if you have a good buffer of complete content.
Chatting on Skype is free unless you're calling a real phone.
And consider looking into polishing your writing and critiquing skills elsewhere; I personally would recommend reading over this http://www.sfwa.org/2009/06/turkey-city-lexicon-a-primer-for-sf-workshops/ and maybe some other things at SFWA. Even if you're not a genre fiction writer, there's a lot of useful information there.
I think I'd like to do it. I was thinking of not really sharing my work until it was done, but I feel like I won't grow as a writer if I don't get some other people to tell me what's working and not working. It's hard for me to pinpoint it myself sometimes, and I think something like this would be great.
I have Skype and am available after 5 on MWF.
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