Never write alone – there’s a critique group for that!

Has anybody else ever been in this situation? I found an adorable premise for a story – actually, stole it, but that’s a tale for later – only to have critique partners shoot it down. 

It seemed so lovely. My fingers flew over the keyboard until the workshop members at the Writers Guild of Texas said, in the politest possible way, really? Would anybody in the character’s situation think like that? Part of the problem, I realized, was that the style wasn’t a good fit for me. The rest of the problem was that my eyes willingly overlooked whatever I didn’t want to see. Hello, rewrite. And a much happier me with the resulting version.

But what would have happened without those other sets of eyes on my story? And how can a writer find those other eyes and voices in a time when writing workshops probably aren’t included in our states’ list of “essential” activities?

Image: truthseekers08 from Pixabay

If there’s a bright side to a global pandemic, it’s the plethora of online activities it’s given rise to.  Once, writers in places without in-person workshops were isolated from their peers. Now those peers are little more than a click away.

I live in North Texas, home to WORD (Writing Organizations ’Round Dallas) whose site includes a map of member groups, including those with critique and discussion groups. You’ll need to contact groups that catch your attention, because not all websites have been updated to show which offer online activities. But for those that do, distance is no problem.

Or check out resources at The Write Life for finding critique partners. I’ll also put in a promo for WRiTE CLUB, run by one of my critique partners. Pitch in to critique writing samples for the contest currently underway, then peruse the other readers offering critiques for potentially congenial souls to work with.

Or, maybe you’ve decided your writing skills could use a brush up during this time of sheltering at home, but cost, distance, or safety prohibit in-person classes. Hello, internet again. Besides WORD’s interactive map, check out the likes of Writing Workshops Dallas, from multi-published short story author Blake Kimzey, for its online offerings.

And don’t overlook the Writers’ League of Texas for even more online classes. (The Writers’ League still lists its annual Agents and Editors Conference in Austin, Texas, as ongoing, but I keep checking the site for updates.)

Yes, I am partial to Texas events, but again, with the internet, residence is not an issue. Writer’s Digest, for instance, offers its own school of online courses. There are also many other online courses listings that I haven’t had an opportunity to vet but would welcome reader feedback on.

***

And after writing, polishing skills, and getting feedback, how about adding contests to those to-do lists? A friend reminded me of a venue that doesn’t usually come to mind when I think of contests – the Dallas Museum of Art’s Arts & Letters Live program. It’s currently requesting submissions for its 2021 Texas Bound series of short fiction to be read aloud. Entries must either be from authors who have lived in Texas or have a Texas character, setting, subject, or theme. See the site for details. DMA encourages entries by June 15 but will accept them throughout the summer. Authors whose pieces are chosen will receive $150 plus two complimentary tickets to the reading. No entry fee.

The indefatigable Arthur Klepchukov also offers his seasonal contest list – Fiction Writing Contests Worth Your Time in Summer 2020.

Blogger Erica Verillo’s Publishing . . . and Other Forms of Insanity posts about 48 absolutely free writing contests for June. And as always, check Ralan.com and Reedsy for more, more more contests!

Have a great, productive, and safe summer, writers!

Weather frightful? Online classes & contests still delightful!

‘Tis the season – for ice, snow and crazy holiday traffic. Never mind, there’s plenty for writers to do during these wintry days. Instead of fighting the weather, try a sampling of contests – not to mention craft-sharpening online classes. (And wouldn’t they make great gifts for the fellow writers on your ‘nice’ list. . . )

I’ll start with contests, because they’re coming up as fast as blizzards on the prairie.

From Writer Unboxed blogger Arthur Klepchukov, check out the winter 2018 version of “Fiction Writing Contests Worth Your Time.” (Worried that 2018’s fast coming up in the rearview mirror? Klepchukov kindly includes contests through February 28, 2019.)

Yes, I’m behind on some of these (see my December 8 post for excuses), but these are currently open: Nowhere – Fall 2018 Travel Writing Contest, with a December 31, 2018, deadline. Fee: $20, cash prize and publication. International writers welcome! See the site for details.

Before Columbus Foundation – American Book Awards. No cash, but a chance to support a noble, inclusive cause. No fee, but you’ll have to submit two copies of the book to the foundation by December 31, so make tracks for the post office! See the site for details.

Boulevard – Short Fiction Contest for Emerging Writers, $16 entry fee, cash prize and publication in a prestigious journal. (And did I mention it’s emerging writer-friendly?)

And – final on Klepchukov’s list for December 31 – River Styx – 2019 Microfiction Contest. Entry fee: $10-$20, publication and cash awards.

mage: pixabay

Want more? Keep reading down Klepchukov’s list for January and February! Or take a look at these listings from New Pages including:   Tartt First Fiction Award for writers who have not yet published a full story collection. Deadline: December 31, 2018. Entry fee: $20. See the site for details.

StoryQuarterly Nonfiction Contest, with a January 12, 2019, deadline. Cash prize and publication. See the site for entry fee.

2019 Colorado Prize for Poetry, for book-length collections of poems. Cash and book publication. Reading fee $25 (plus $3 for online submissions). Due date: January 14, 2019.

Also from New Pages – Rattle Chapbook Prize, Palette Poetry Spotlight Award, Kenyon Review Inaugural Short Nonfiction Contest, and more. See the New Pages site for details.

Oh, you say, you’re more of a genre writer? Check out the contest listings at Ralan.com for horror, science fiction, fantasy and mystery.

Or the previously mentioned, but still open manuscript and book contests from the Writers’League of Texas for works in a variety of genres. There’s a January 31, 2019, deadline for the manuscript contest, which doesn’t even require a completed manuscript, only the first 10 (or so) pages plus a synopsis, and offers a chance to win entry to the League’s 2019 Agents and Editors Conference. Entry fee for the manuscript contest is $55 for WLT members, $65 for nonmembers (includes written critique). Or opt to skip the critique and pay only $25 for members, $35 for nonmembers. WLT’s book contest (for books published in 2018) closes February 28, 2019. See the site for rules for both book and manuscript contests.

And, sharpen your writing skills with online classes and seminars at the likes of the Writers’ League of Texas  (no state residency required!) and Writing Workshops Dallas.

You can attend in-person classes at both the WLT and Writing Workshops Dallas, but check out Writer Workshops Dallas’s array of 8-week long online classes beginning January 14, 2019, in personal essays, crime/suspense writing, kidlit and more at $495 for new students, $470 for returning students. (Writing Workshops Dallas also offers gift certificates, hint, hint.)

Not ready for an eight-week commitment? Try the WLT’s lineup of one-day (usually three-hour long) online classes for $49 for members/ $109 for nonmembers. And check out the limited time offer, four-class packages for $160!

Here’s a writing course sample – will you open the box?

FLASH: Since posting this, I have learned that the NaNoWriMo courses for 2017 are now closed. Here's the current link, for those who want to see what's publically available. Or mark your calendars for 2018.

I just started another of the online writing courses NaNoWriMo sponsors with Coursera and Wesleyan College. This is my third of the four courses NaNoWriMo wrangled for people interested in participating in its annual November write-a-thon. Instructors so far have been Salvatore Scibona (The End), Amity Gage (O My Darling), and now Amy Bloom (Lucky Us). The classes are billed as lasting four weeks, but I clipped through the first ones at about two weeks each, starting in late August.

image: pixabay

As I’ve mentioned before, you can listen to the lectures and interviews, do the readings and writing assignments free of charge. However, you will need to pay the special $29 fee per class to get (and give) reviews and feedback from your fellow cyber classmates.

Even though one of my peer reviewers was kind enough to tell me that I failed the first assignment in Scibona’s course on The Craft of Style, enough of my fellow classmates gave me a pass to let me slither through the course’s pass/fail grading system.

The assignment was to write three paragraphs of description using language of the physical senses – sight, sound, touch/feel, smell and taste. He didn’t say we had to cram all five senses into those three paragraphs, and I only managed three. Here’s my effort.

***

The Box

I head for the garage to go through that box Matt and I kept in case there were more kids, even after we knew how unlikely that would be. When I flip on the overhead light, a small scorpion scuttles backward, claws clicking, tail raised menacingly. I’ll have to warn the kids about it. Or maybe I shouldn’t say anything. Their boys’ curiosity is as likely to send them in search of the deadly little creature as to scare them away from it.

The box I want hasn’t been opened, although two years have passed since our move here to Las Vegas. The tape sealing its seams is brown and peeling. Written on its dusty side is its room designation: nursery. I bend carefully at the knees to lift the box, conscious of the importance of legs, of knees, of the flex and stretch of muscles, of feet planted firmly on the ground. Things you don’t miss until they’re gone.

Then out to the patio. There are wet marks on the box when I set it on the picnic table. Sweat? You don’t sweat in the dry desert heat of Las Vegas. Sweat wicks off exposed skin before you even have a chance to feel it. But the marks must be sweat. They can’t be tears. Surely, I don’t have any tears left to cry.

***

I realized later, and classmates pointed out, that I could have done more with the smells of the box and garage, or the taste of the tears. Definitely remember that during NaNoWriMo's revision phase. I also (as did most of the classmates I reviewed) tried to make this part of a narrative, which Scibona later told us was not his intention. It only needed to be a portrait, not a complete narrative.

If any of my writing critique partners are out there, they’ll recognize this as a fragment from a work in progress, although the assignments are not intended to give us a cut-and-paste formula for our NaNoWriMo opus.

Could I have managed better by writing longer paragraphs? Maybe. At least one of the classmates I reviewed simply gave up paragraphing altogether. I laughed and gave him/her a pass because the language of the writing was in keeping with the stated assignment.

About those writing classes – what are you waiting for?

Last month I posted about fall writing classes. I personally test as much about what I post as possible. So, when I found a class I’d never heard of before, even though it was vouched for by NaNoWriMo, the annual November writing marathon I’ve participated in several times, I took the plunge. It’s the series of writing courses offered by Coursera in cooperation with Wesleyan College. I’m halfway through my second course, and it’s wonderful!

This series -- about style, setting, character and plot -- is a one-time only offering from an established liberal arts school, taught by visiting professors who are also fine writers. Still, after I posted, readers had concerns. Even I had some concerns. 

The cost is $29 per course, each of which includes a series of four lectures, interviews with visiting writers and editors, readings, and writing assignments reviewed by other students. There’s also a requirement to review at least three other student writers/assignment. All this has been arranged by NaNoWriMo. I initially was taken aback by the possibility of graded assignments, but each assignment is purely pass-fail. No one need ever be shocked by your GPA.

image: pixabay

One reader worried that the $29 fee meant he was required to pay to participate in NaNoWriMo, a misconception which I blame myself for not clarifying. There is not, never has been, and no doubt never will be a charge to participate in NaNoWriMo. Yes, it’s a nonprofit organization, which like most nonprofits doesn’t refuse to have money thrown at it. But it doesn’t charge you to write.

In fact, if you want to take the NaNoWriMo-sponsored Coursera courses, you can do that completely free of charge. The only things you have to pay for are the chance to get and give feedback on the course’s writing assignments. The $29 also nets you an attractive certificate if you complete the course, which Coursera suggests you may want to add to LinkedIn or other social media sites.  (I’m still debating whether to display my certificate for completing the first course, The Craft of Style.)

I also clicked on a link asking Wesleyan for more information about its online courses and learned it has its own, non-NaNoWriMo, non-Coursera online courses. Each of them costs approximately $2,900. That’s not a typo. A standard online course at this old-line liberal arts college costs 100 times the price of the NaNoWriMo-Coursera version.

I’m sure students get more lectures, more writing assignments, more individual instruction in Wesleyan’s non-Coursera classes. After a couple of years of those, they also will have a master of fine arts degree in creative writing to add to their resumes. If they stay the course. For now, I’ll take a certificate or four and run.

Other readers, including members of my online critique group said, no, they never participate in NaNoWriMo. Or, holiday and family obligations prevent their participation.

That also worries me a bit. Is it because the stated aim of NaNoWriMo is to encourage writers to add 50,000 words to their novels in the single month of November? Does the thought of unwashed writers pecking away night and day on their keyboards, foregoing sleep, day jobs, and family daunt us? Does it make anybody who proclaims an interest in devoting an entire 30 days to a project sound crazy?

It should, of course. We’re writers. Crazy is what we do.

To be truthful, I’ve never hit the 50,000-word mark during NaNoWriMo. But I’ve added a few other tens of thousands of words to works in progress that might ever have gotten written without that impetus, still managed to meet a few other family, job, and community obligations. As well as the occasional meal and shower.

The NaNoWriMo-Coursera-Wesleyan series of four courses only runs through October 31, giving us time to finish before the magical month of November. And although each course is billed as a four-weeker, I did the first in two weeks, and look to meet that schedule for the second course. It’s even possible to knock out each of them in a week, but you may want to save your sleep deprivation for the NaNoWriMo marathon itself. Completed courses stay online for six months, giving writers a chance to review and refresh at our leisure.

If you missed your email from NaNoWriMo, or if you haven't yet made the commitment, see the Wesleyan site for details. Don’t hesitate too long. November waits for no writer.