Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Suggestions for organizing your group

This is topic Suggestions for organizing your group in forum Hatrack Groups at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

When I was the one who put groups together (something I stopped doing because my guesses at who would work well with whom just didn't work out very often), I sent some suggestions to each new group, in hopes that they would help the group members in running the group.

I will start by posting some of that here, but if you figure out other ways to run a group, please feel free to post them here, too.

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

PLANNING THE SCHEDULE
When you tell each other about yourselves, please share what you have ready to send for critiquing. Please "sign up" for the days you want to submit works. The submissions should occur on a weekly or bi-weekly interval. Hatrack recommends a weekly schedule. Weekend days such as Saturday usually work best for most groups.

The members of the group should try to read and comment on the work before the next work is submitted. If LIFE happens to you, and you are unable to critique for a while, please let the rest of the group know. That way everyone knows if you still plan on participating in the future.

EMAILING YOUR COMMENTS
Please email your comments to all the members in the group. You will learn more from each other that way. If you are worried about being influenced by what someone else has said about a work, save the email to read after you've written up and sent your comments. (If everyone puts the group letters at the beginning of the subject line of their emails, followed by something like "Crit for XX's submission," comments by the other group members will be easy to identify.)

If you aren't sure how to give feedback on someone else's work, there are some critique guidelines posted in the Ways to Critique area on the Hatrack website. Because they were posted a while ago, they won't show up when you go to that area until you ask the Hatrack web software to show you all of the topics. You may also go directly to the critique guidelines using the following URLs:

http://www.hatrack.com/forums/writers/forum/Forum21/HTML/000001.html

http://www.hatrack.com/forums/writers/forum/Forum21/HTML/000002.html

http://www.hatrack.com/forums/writers/forum/Forum21/HTML/000003.html

http://www.hatrack.com/forums/writers/forum/Forum21/HTML/000004.html

You are welcome to discuss each other's comments, and if someone's comments gives you ideas on more you can say about the material being discussed, feel free to send additional comments to the group. If you have questions about what someone else has said, feel free to ask for clarification. This can be a useful learning experience for everyone, not just for the person whose work is under discussion.

"CATCH UP" WEEKS
There will be some weeks when no one has anything ready, and members can use that time to catch up. The group may also designate a regular week as a "catch up" week.

STARTING DISCUSSIONS
If you are scheduled and you don't have something ready, you may want to start a discussion on some aspect of writing that you need help on. You can also ask for brainstorming help on a story fragment. You can discuss things from the Writing Class area or the Open Discussion on Writing area on the website.

SUBMISSION LENGTH
A short story is considered (by the people who give awards for science fiction and fantasy short stories, for example) to be no longer than 7500 words (at most, 30 manuscript pages). If that seems too long, then set a limit of 20 manuscript pages, or about 5000 words. This will work for short story manuscripts and for fragments of larger manuscripts.

If your manuscript is longer than about 300 lines (single-spaced), it's a good idea to break it up into parts for email. Be sure you label each part at the beginning and at the end, so the other members of the group will be sure they got all of it.

EMAILING SUBMISSIONS
In order to send your work to the rest of the group, you all need to know how to put your manuscript into email.

If you don't know how to import text into email, let me know. Tell me what kind of system you have (Mac, Windows, DOS, whatever), and I will try to help you work out how to do it. Do NOT send manuscripts as attached files unless you KNOW the person you are sending them to can access the files. Do not send manuscripts in any format other than generic text format (also known as ASCII). It is recommended that you tell each other what software you are using (MSWord 97, WordPerfect 9.0, etc).

NOVEL SUBMISSIONS
In case you have a novel that you want feedback on, I have posted what I call "novel critique suggestions" in the Ways to Critique area on the Hatrack website. Everyone in the group should go read them. You can reach them directly by going to

http://www.hatrack.com/forums/writers/forum/Forum21/HTML/000005.html

It will be up to each group member to decide which option they wish to use in giving you feedback on your novel.

MISCELLANEOUS
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me. I tried to think of everything, but I'm sure I haven't. So I would appreciate your help. It's one of the reasons we're here--to help each other.

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

Taking turns where a different person in the group sends something around to the others each week and the others critique it is one way to organize exchanges in a group.

Another way is as follows:

1) Each member will submit one piece of their original writing between the first and twentieth of each month.

2) Each member will critique everyone else's writing submissions within three weeks of the date of each submission (i.e. if the submission is emailed on May 5, then all critiques for that item will be in no later than May 26; if a submission is emailed on May 15, then all critiques for that item will be in no later than June 5.)

In addition to that, a member may opt to skip a month for a crisis or a long vacation or some other well founded reason. However, they must let the group know that they will not be participating in that month. Only one month should be skipped in any three-month period of time.

So there are no set ways to schedule exchanges. The group members should work out a way that works best for everyone in the group.

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

posting to make the topic visible