Writing Club Organizational Thread
All writers are invited to take part in the newborn Tildes Writing Club! Let’s let the club organize as it grows, but as a starting point, I present loose, inclusive guidelines formed from the meeting of ideas in the last thread. (I was going to list aspects as separate replies for easier picking apart, but I guess I can’t make separate replies to the same post.) Feel free call out an aspect to compare it with a different approach.
Schedule
A thread will surface every three weeks inviting you to post your work. You may post your piece to the thread at any time before the next appears, but you risk missing out on readers. Finish and submit your critiques before the next recurring thread. (I declare this quite confidently for someone with no idea how recurring threads work.) Should the inaugural submission thread open on March 1?
Sharing
Reply to the recurring submission thread with a link to your work, which may be housed anywhere you like, including on Tildes. Prioritize venues that are not known to be aggressively anti-privacy (e.g., Google Docs). You may share a selection from a larger work, but your submission should not exceed 7,000 words. Shorter by half that is likelier to be read. There will be no minimum length. You may provide questions for readers in hidden expandable text, if you like.
Feedback
Critique participation will operate on the honor system. When submitting, you are encouraged to provide meaningful feedback to three pieces each cycle. These will be self-assigned. To assign yourself a piece, post a reply to it as placeholder. Assign yourself to pieces that haven’t yet been taken before signing on as a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th reader. That is, while there are still pieces without assigned readers (which will be apparent due to the lack of replies), take one of those first to ensure everyone is getting read. Naturally, you may leave critiques or comments in a free and unregulated fashion if you aren’t submitting work for critique this round. I suggest leaving feedback in the reply you created as placeholder. Others may have better ideas.
Themes / Forms
Hopefully, taking part in the club will motivate you to produce new writing. The community will suggest themes as inspiration after the posting of a submission thread. These could be chosen democratically, or by a rotating theme-warden, but should be mooted outside the submissions thread. I prefer themes to be extremely flexible, rather than a prompt: “Orange; Breathless; Common Parlance;” instead of “On Tuesday you discover the ability to control trains with your mind.” Submissions do not need to follow the theme. We might decide to have a round dedicated to poetry, but then again, why not gather an assortment of forms and genres?
Showcase and ‘Zine
As motivation for writers, and to benefit the wider Tildes community, I would like to see a periodic showcase thread highlighting the best of our work. It makes sense to post this separately, rather than just by tagging exemplary pieces, because most of us will want to improve our submissions with feedback in mind. @acdw has the idea of organizing a ‘zine to further showcase our best work. This, it seems to me, suggests wonderful opportunities for collaboration with visual artists. The schedule for both of these will have to depend on activity in the club.
Spirit
I hope for the club to be egalitarian, advanced by participants with good ideas and a flair for organization. Despite my failings, I hope to be such. To the degree that I can direct the energy of the group, I would like to give the following precept: Be generous. Writers, be a gracious guest in the minds of your readers. Be generous in your criticism. Don't abstain from lauding your favorites--that is important. At the same time, recognize that you compliment writing when you take it seriously enough to voice serious problems you may wish to see it avoid. Interpret criticism in the same spirit of generosity.
I would suggest striking while the iron is still a bit more hot, rather than waiting nearly a month.
And as for the themes/forms, I actually feel somewhat the opposite as you. I really enjoy writing prompts (both using them and creating them), as good ones tend to motivate me to write far more than something more open-ended and ambiguous. So I would like to suggest at least considering doing the occasional prompt driven thread, or some prompt writing exercises.
Other than those niggles, and regardless of what gets decided on, I am looking forward to this (even though I didn't comment in the last topic). :)
Glad to hear it! By all means, we could have prompts, as long as there are multiple springboards (some of which, in my opinion, should be very broad). It can be fun to see where stories diverge on the fate of Mrs. Schiel, your quietest customer, who in a hasty departure one day leaves a folder of erotic Polaroids next to her unfinished Darjeeling. It's only that I would hate for that to be the sole prompt.
Could do. I figured folks would need time to write. If we're sitting on a backlog of material, however, we could open it now?
Given that the idea is to at least to partially rely on themes (or prompts) to help inspire people to start writing something, isn't waiting for people to write something kind of defeating the purpose a bit? Or is this the topic where we should be coming up with theme ideas and whatnot?
And given Tildes Activity sort being the default sorting method, I don't think we really need to worry too much about when the topic actually gets posted, since any time someone makes a new comment it will bump the topic back to the top of the sort, even if that is weeks after it was posted.
Yeah. Let's do that. We can see which ideas get "oohs" and lots of votes.
I have the idea that we'll all be working toward the same deadline and posting around the same time, enhancing the communal aspect through rough synchrony. In my view, this is the first planning thread, where the first call for submissions is hammered out, including theme ideas. The pieces would (I propose) be due on the 1st.
I think it might be worth making a totally new topic for discussing the potential theme, since this topic already has a lot of stuff related to the club for people to take in, consider, and discuss. So adding theme suggestions to the mix, especially as bit of an afterthought, is unlikely to get it as much focus as I think it probably deserves. But it's totally up to you, and if you would rather everything just be organized everything in here let me know, and I will try to think of some themes and submit them as a new top level comment. :)
OK, sure. I can make a new topic post unless you beat me to it.
I understand why, but I feel like the theme might lose its purpose if it becomes too vague.
Maybe there could be a larger, vague themes, like orange and breathless, and then a slightly more specific theme for those who want it? I personally am terribly in love with super simplistic themes.
Sounds great to me! I like all of everyone's thoughts, sorry I don't have a ton of feedback. I think maybe a "suggested theme", where you can write to it if you'd like but you don't have to, is a good idea -- and a good middle ground b/w the theme-no-theme camps. I agree that it could start sooner than March 1 ... how about VALENTIMES DAY!?!?!? <3 <3 <3 I could bang out (heh) a dumb love poem thing by then, for sure. Of course, not sure if anyone else could. Valentine's also does a good thing where the theme is kind of automatically suggested but like, you can do whatev. So.
As far as sharing goes, I know that for me I'll be posting things on my in-construction website (so it'll be another kick to get it finished!), uh yeah.
EXCITED :)
Awesome!
I find that excessively stringent and unlikely to be followed. It will prevent people from participating. 1 for 1 would make more sense.
3 weeks is a weird cycle. Why not make it a month?
I don't like the themes thing. Theme should be free. Always. Otherwise you'll reduce participation.
I think a lot of people will feel as you do--that providing more critiques is tiresome. But that's exactly why such a policy ought to be mandated. You can well imagine the disappointment of receiving just one critique on your piece, one which failed to read your piece carefully and left unhelpful negative feedback. Better to spread it around. To me, critiques are the participation. The reason for having a club is to increase the likelihood of good feedback. Otherwise, why not just post work on one's own?
I agree there should be mandated criticism, I just think the amount in your proposal is excessive.
How would mandating two critiques for every one submission sit with you?
That would most certainly be better. Although, in my opinion, one for one would be ideal.
OP said
I agree with your other comments.
I don't think there should be any theme at all...
I personally like the idea of having themes for people who want them. I don't have a crazy backlog of writing that I can share for review, so this would be a good opportunity for me to pick a theme and write around that for practice.