Last night, at the May 18 Shenandoah Writers (IRL) meeting, we covered several topics.

SWO LIVE CHAT

• May 25—9-10P.M. on Shenandoah Writers Online
• I’m open to topic suggestions.  If you have any, please let me know ASAP.

CRITIQUING

• Changes to the critiquing schedule
  • We are going to cover one person’s work at each of the next several meetings, instead of two. This is because we don’t want to short-change the second person being critiqued at a given meeting (by rushing it, etc.)—plus, we don’t want to spend the whole time critiquing, when I’m sure there will be other things to discuss.

• Page limit for critiques
  • When you’re up for critique, submit the first two chapters, not to exceed 20 pages.  For essays or short stories, just send the whole thing.

• How to send
  • Person being critiqued must e-mail the group a copy of his/her critique submission no later than one week before the next meeting (so, you have up to a week to get your crit submission together and then the rest of us have a week to read it/comment)
  • When you send your crit piece, make sure you are sending a .doc file, so we are all able to open it.
  • E-mail being sent to all members with everyone’s email addresses

• How to critique
  • Dave brought in some awesome handouts of not only constructive ways to critique but also areas in which to critique.  When he sends me the files, I will post them in the forum on the SWO network, so we can all access them.
  • We agreed that all critiquers need to have a hard copy of the critique submission printed out & brought with them to the meeting. This means each person will need to print out his/her own copy prior to coming to the meeting.
  • Ideally, you will have read and commented right on the submission before each meeting.

• • At the meetings, either the author or someone else (I don’t mind doing this for everyone) will read the submission out loud, so the author can hear how it sounds/catch awkward or unwieldy sentences and so everyone can have the piece fresh in his/her mind. This will also enable critiquers to write down more notes as the piece is being read.
  • Each critiquer will discuss positive comments and constructive criticism on how to improve/clarify/etc.
  • At the end of the critique session, each member will hand in his/her hard copy to the author so he/she has something concrete for reference when revising.

• Openings assignment
  • After we hammered out the details, we spent some time going through various novel openers and what we learned about the book from them.
  • This was a little awkward to do with just three of us, but I think it went OK over all.
  • I will post my handout to SWO, for anyone who wants to take a look.

• Next meeting
  • The next meeting is June 1 @ Barnes & Noble (7PM)
  • Dave is up for critique
  • I would also like to discuss journalistic writing & freelancing a bit after we critique because I will be putting together my class on that subject for the Southeastern Writers Association at the end of June.
    • Anything you think I should include, I’m all ears.
    • I would also like to know what writers unfamiliar with or new to how to approach journalistic writing & freelancing NEED TO KNOW—so bring any questions you have as well.