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let's have a writing workshop

those benzos did almost nothing. even added another 10mg alprazolam on top. god, what a waste of good pharms. now i'm slightly sedated and depressed, since i don't know when or where i'll get my next script and i took the benzos knowing full well that my tolerance was sky high and that it was a shitty idea and yet i did it anyway. ah, the joys of addiction.
 
Can we submit a piece we've already posted to the forum?

I'd like to join but i'm not sure if i'm anywhere near skilled enough to critique other's works.
 
It's not a question of being a skilled editor. Anybody can workshop literature. All opinions are valid. That's why they do focus groups. If you can articulate why you like aspects of a film, or why you don't, then you can workshop a short story. You aren't expected to offer professional advice or use industry standard annotations.

Join us; don't worry about it.
 
I'll help critique various things. I'm not sure if I want to submit the things I'm seriously working on, but I have plenty of strange, whimsical, pieces that I might feel like sharing.

I was wondering, why not have more than 1 or 2 a week like the OP proposed? I don't see why only one a week should be focused upon when there's plenty of talented writers here. Maybe different categories of submission too?

Sorry if these ideas came up in another post in the thread I'm just focusing on this thread for the first time. A little scatter brained atm.
 
CoffeeDrinker said:
I was wondering, why not have more than 1 or 2 a week like the OP proposed? I don't see why only one a week should be focused upon when there's plenty of talented writers here. Maybe different categories of submission too?
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propose a system. i'm just trying to get things moving.

but please don't submit a piece that you already have and are not taking serious.
 
^yeah, the group critiquing will take place in the forum. only getting the pieces to one another will take going outside the forum. which we are over thinking. they just need to be uploaded somewhere on the internet as a file that can be read with freeware and maintains the format you wrote the piece in. post a link. no problem.
 
I agree that there should be more than one per week. But, realistically, we can't do too many. I'd say 3 is probably too many. Maybe 2 per week? As for a system, we could just adapt the current system to include an extra workshop. I'm happy to submit something whenever. 25th of June. 2nd of July. I don't mind. If we make a schedule with two people per week, rather than one, we'll have a backup; like if somebody doesn't submit on time, or has something happen to them, or whatever, then there will still be a workshop. It's bound to happen.

I think 20 pages is too long. I don't mind editing/reading/giving feedback for pieces up to 10,000 words - but I think it's probably too much for some people. There should be a word limit. I think 4,000-5,000 is more sensible. Personally, I'd push it back to about 3,000 words. I've done a lot of workshops. 3,000 words is quite a lot. I don't really care, either way, as I said. I just want the workshop idea to succeed. If we get 10,000 word submissions, I think we'll be struggling to provide detailed feedback within a week. 10,000 is an incredibly long short story. Most short story competitions are up to 3,000.

How about 1,000-4,000 words, rather than 1,000-10,000 words?
 
hydroazuanacaine said:
propose a system. i'm just trying to get things moving.

but please don't submit a piece that you already have and are not taking serious.
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Sorry to sound like I wouldn't take it seriously. It's just that the stuff I take REALLY seriously, I guard a bit. But you're right, it shouldn't even be about what I've already written, it's about what I've yet to write.

Well the system doesn't seem to difficult, just like, one essay category, maybe 2 poetry categories-one for stricter forms or songs-one for free form, a short story category.

I'm sure we could find a good balance between taking care of several people's writing itches at the same time, and keeping it all organized.
 
CoffeeDrinker said:
Sorry to sound like I wouldn't take it seriously. It's just that the stuff I take REALLY seriously, I guard a bit. But you're right, it shouldn't even be about what I've already written, it's about what I've yet to write.
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cool. yeah, the piece should be written specifically for this workshop.

let's see if we can get one piece a week before we try for four? there is still all of the Words forum for individual writers to post their work. part of the idea here is to force a significant amount of effort into one piece.

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just saw ForEverAfter's post. 1,000-4,000 words seems reasonable to me. i still think we should stick to one a week. not because we can't critique two, but because only one focuses the pressure. if we had 15 writers who were taking this like a class they needed an A in to make a grad program or keep a scholarship, fuck yeah, two a week. but i'd be really happy to see us consistently putting out one truly polished piece a week.
 
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^I'm very into that idea, but I think there'd be no problem if we kept it organized in strict categories so it's not like the submissions are over-lapping. That way more people could get this focused critique of their work at a time. How extensive of a peer editing did you have in mind? Were you thinking of like a rough draft submission, then a finalized(or at least less rough) version? I think that'd aspect would be very helpful, just like in a real English class.

How about we have one main editor, as it were, for each category, that we somehow all agreed upon. That way people's attentions wouldn't be too diverted trying to cover multiple submissions.

Realistically, it takes one afternoon of homework-time to come up with a decent opinion and set of talking points on any given shorter piece. At least that's how my English classes always seemed to go. But say a solid 10 hours of just sitting there and delving into it over the course of the week would be optimal. Who else has any ideas about the overall structure of this thing?

I was thinking if we did have a submission date for the rough draft, and another for the revised version, we could have an "epilogue" submission, which is like at the leisure of the author in focus, and that could come at any time after the comments on the revised version have been lodged. Just so we could see if they made even more progress with it.
 
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CoffeeDrinker said:
Were you thinking of like a rough draft submission, then a finalized(or at least less rough) version?
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no! pieces submitted should be polished. they should not come with a disclaimer about the author not being able to get to this or that. they should reflect a significant amount of effort. individuals in the critique should print the piece off--or whatever, some people work well reading from a screen; my point is the amount of attention that should be given. spend time with it and take notes on it before coming into the discussion.

though i am all for occasional revision rounds. during which it would make sense to receive and cover more than one piece a week.
 
Dude, even the most polished pieces are revised. What do you think took F Scott Fitzgeral over 10 years to finish Great Gatsby? And that's a tiny tiny book compared with lots of others.
His first draft might've been a best selling novel in his time, but his 1000000th draft was a legend of modern literature.

The pieces I've recently submitted to words got moderate praise by some people, and those were all serious attempts, thinking about several layers of literature at once, and yet they were done quickly and stream of consciously. I know I can do a lot better than what I put up there if the feedback led to another chance at revision. Every English class has that facet to it, the feedback leads to those who responded to it wanting to see how the author went about changing it. It's really good for the piece. You can definitely write a great work in one go at it, but you can make that work even greater with a second serious stab at it. Then I figured people would want to comment on the revision, and then a third edition could just be at the poster's leisure with no deadline, just so we could see how the art was getting along in life. :)
 
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i don't think we have a point of disagreement here. i am saying that submitted work should be polished, not rough.
 
Yeah submissions must be relatively polished. First drafts aren't appropriate. It's frustrating taking the time to provide feedback, when the writer hasn't taken the time to re-draft (at least a couple of times). You should workshop your own work before you get other people to workshop it. Nobody is expecting Gatsby, but the submissions ought to be of a fairly high standard. No spelling/grammar mistakes, etc. I've work-shopped too many first drafts over the years.

As for the one or two people a week question, I suspect that we might end up with nobody to workshop at some point. I'm not sure I understand the categories idea. Like, are we going to have multiple workshop threads for different forms of writing. A poetry thread, a short story thread, etc? If so, we will have multiple submissions anyway. Unless I'm missing something.

Also, there should be a line limit for poems. 10-100 lines, maybe?
 
Well idk about you guys, but I think the term "rough draft" seems to be the point of contention here. I know in highschool english class the rough draft was basically a jizzed on piece of notebook paper with chicken scratches, but, in advanced writing classes in college, I put every bit of effort into the first drafts as the final. And whenever I did rush it, it still got good reviews, but the professor was easily able to see how I cut corners, or missed things, or whatever. There's always a revision to be made imo. I think this could be more interesting than the photo comp threads and other weekly submission threads if we go about it the right way.
I'm very into the idea of helping produce quality works. All I'm saying is we follow through, how can we just give advice as a one off, and not want to see the following revision? It just seems shwaggy or w/e, like a ghetto version of a writers workshop.

And yeah ForEverAfter I was thinking a different thread for each category with like an agreed upon division of attention among the reviewers. Like If max reviews the essay, he wouldnt do the poem, etc. Ya know?

Hmm, line limit for poems...I'm definitely seeing the wisdom in having limited submissions, but I can't really think of a good limit for poetry.
You should be able to read The Raven in one sitting with just a little focus, and how many lines does that have?
 
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CoffeeDrinker said:
All I'm saying is we follow through, how can we just give advice as a one off, and not want to see the following revision?
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how about revision rounds? where instead of submitting a new piece, we will submit something that has been critiqued by this workshop and since re-written.
 
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Yeah that's what I'm talking about I think. We're all going in this assuming that the person writing the piece is actually writing something they care about, want to perfect (if possible) and be proud of? If so I think it'd make sense for every submission to have a revision round with a deadline, with an option to post a 2ND revision at their leisure just in case they wanted to show off any further progress they might've made.
 
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