Okay, the idea behind this is that it is an informal group to help people gain confidence in their writing and to provide honest critique of work. How this will work is as follows:
Everything will be organised via email (wordsmith 'at'
ix-tab.com). This will be done anonymously and I won't share your email with anyone (even if they're really pretty and willing to bribe me with sexual favours), this also includes other members of the group...people will almost certainly have different views on privacy and it's just easier to manage that way.
The group exists to do two things:
1) encourage people to start writing
2) offer a forum for receiving feedback on your work...any work, not just work done for assignments. So if you have something you'd like critiqued please submit it to the email address.
Submissions should be up to a maximum of 100 lines of poetry, 20 pages of script or 8000 words of prose. Like I said, maximums, you don't have to feel bad if you don't write up to the limit...it's about quality not quantity. Longer non homework submissions will be put in a queue, so please don't fret if things take time.
You don't have to do every bit of homework if you don't want to and choosing to opt out of a particular months homework doesn't mean you are excluded from the group (that also means no complaining if someone chooses to opt out and make it known). You will however still get work to critique.
You are not obliged to share your homework if you don't want to (you may have written about something quite personal and just not want to share), but obviously by not doing so you will lose out on receiving any critique which could help you improve as a writer.
Assignments will be set every other month, that gives everyone plenty of time to write and to critique the previous submissions (this time frame is open to review). Submission date is the first saturday of the month (obviously allowing for being bi-monthly)
please try and be constructive in your critique, I shall take a dim view on bashing and negativity
if I get a lot of submission, I may stock pile them to use during lean months, so at least we have something to review
If things don't seem to be working let me know, I may be an evil super genius with her own secret volcano lair, but i'm not a despot.
and most importantly...have fun.
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Homework assignments:There are two choices this month.
write something on the theme of snow or write a story (in whatever form you like) about meeting your deceased father (obviously after he's dead).
you have until the first saturday in march. Now get writing.