Silk

Yup, that's fine.

Anyone else for Monday?

Wow, really sorry about that. I must have forgotten to add you to the list. Fixed now.

You bet.

Done deal.

Glad it worked out for you. Just for general reference, if anyone ever has a massive hard drive failure or something, I don't think I've ever deleted an email from my RE account and I've been part of the group from day one. So should something similar happen to anyone else, I should be able to hook you up with anything you've submitted here.

All right, you're on.

It'll be Monday again from now on. And go ahead and submit whatever you feel most useful--if you want to submit the first three chapters, say, that's fine, as long as you're somewhere in the ballpark of 4k. =)

Yes, same address, and yes, go for it. Liven the place up a little.

I posted the link to the old email list thread because I haven't yet had a chance to move the rules over to the new forum. That thread on the read-only forum is actually a pretty accurate description of our current policies--we're just housed in a different forum now. You still join the list the same way, by PMing me with the address that you'd like to receive submissions at, and I'll add you to the list. That won't be right away, though; this is the last chance I'll have to come online until Monday, I'm afraid.

Guys, I'm afraid I'm going to be more or less MIA for the next few days. I'll try to sneak online at a couple of points and maintain the weekly submission list, but I'm in the bridal party for a wedding this weekend so this is likely the last chance I'll get to come online until Monday. Sorry about that.

Some people find queries a useful exercise even before the submission stage--I've even heard of people using query letters as outlines (exercise: write an enticing query letter, THEN write the novel that the query describes). Anyway, it's never too soon to start looking at this stuff--as long as it doesn't keep you from actually writing.

So it's just Robert so far for Monday Sept. 5th, am I right? Sorry, folks--I'm a little scattered right now. I WILL get the rules and stuff moved over ASAP, but probably not before Monday, alas. (I have to clean and disinfect my whole house before my puppy, who contracted a serious illness, recovers enough to come home from the vet--which might possibly happen tomorrow. So, see, I'm not just blowing you guys off. )

Thanks for this--this is a great idea. I've actually been toying with the idea of starting some sort of query letter workshop but I've thus far had too much on my plate to really find out if anyone would be interested. When I get all of the information from TWG moved over link to this in one of the pinned threads (I think we had an "other resources" seciton in one of them; if not, create one). I'll link the conventions thread in that one as well.

Thanks for the feedback, all--sounds like we're pretty much unanimous in thinking five is a good number. We'll try that out for a while. (If you meant to comment and haven't had a chance yet, I'll still be checking this thread, so don't feel that the ship has sailed.)

You're welcome to start reading and critiquing right away, even if you don't have anything to submit right off the bat--just send me a PM with the email address you'd like to use for the list. And you know, I don't think it was addressed specifically. I'll be sure to revise that once we're done moving the rules over.

We've had a busy few weeks submission-wise, with six or seven people submitting weekly for the last couple of weeks, and I'm wanting everyone's feedback on whether it's too busy. It would be nice to be able to accomodate everyone during busier weeks, but only if it works. So, what do you guys think: Does it? Did you find that you were getting enough feedback with the increased numbers? Did you have trouble keeping up (though of course, you don't have to respond to every critique every week). Let me know what you think.

Fifth and final, then. For now, here is an explanation of how the group works from the TWG archives. We're working on a modified version but we're just tweaking the organization, so this should still tell you everything you need to know. Let me know if you have any questions. Also, shoot me a PM to let me know what email address to use.

That's four so far. I'll cap it at five this time 'round--seems like it's going to be a somewhat quieter week anyway?

Welcome to Reading Excuses! If you're not already sure what that is, Reading Excuses is an online critique group. Before you do anything else, click here to find out more about the group and how it operates. Up to speed on all that? Good, then you'll know what we mean when we start talking about our upcoming submission dates. Sept 11:

That's a great point. I work as a tutor at my university, and the creative writing profs don't particularly want their students coming to us because the students already go through a workshop/critique process in class. So definitely check into that.

We use an email list to actually send and receive submissions (so that people's work isn't posted publicly), though yes, the feedback threads are posted here. There are particular formatting guidelines and a weekly submission schedule, so you can't just post whenever you feel like it. There are no genre restrictions, but we're mostly geared towards speculative fiction writers. We'll have the rules and everything up soon--probably this weekend--as soon as we can import that stuff over from the TWG database.

Kchan: Yeah, Eric mentioned that too actually. I think I might. =) Hah, yes. There's a reason I don't let myself revise a book anymore until after the first draft is done. I only feel fortunate that I got the "book that never ends" syndrome out of my system in my teens

Cynic: The other reason you just found out about the transition is that it just happened. Welcome back! Fireflyz: Yeah, I'm really bummed to lose TWG too. I'll miss the community there. And now I'm out a place to post book reviews.

Heh. Yeah, only reason we haven't done so yet is because we're bringing it over from the TWG database so we don't have to rewrite it. =)