WHAT DO YOU THINK OF AN ON-LINE CRITIQUE GROUP?

A REMNANT OF ROUTE 66.  TWO GUNS, ARIZONA.

As many of you know, I have been conducting seminars, titled, “Have you ever thought about writing?” since the release of my book, COAST TO COAST WITH A CAT AND A GHOST.

 I perform these seminar/workshops mainly at RV rallies for two reasons. One, because my book is about but not limited to, travel in an RV. The second reason I choose the RV community because RVers talk to other RVers. What better way to spread the word about my book?

But, on a more serious vein, I have had tremendous interest about the subject. How did you get started? Had you ever written before? How did you self-publish? I read a statistic that 23% of us have considered writing a book.

But here is a problem I have come upon in the RV community. Because I stress the importance of joining a writing group, for support and critique, I have discovered many of the RVers do not have a home base and thus are never in one place long enough to join a group. As I too, am traveling considerably now, I miss my home group.

So here is what I want to put out there in RV cyberspace: How about an on-line critique group?

I am volunteering to act as a moderator of  five people who are serious about their work. I am laying out a format, but I am open to suggestions.

1.      Each member e-mails five pages of current work every week to the other four members. Thus each member will have five pages from each member to read and critique. Members will use Microsoft Word and learn to use the track changes feature. Each member will make the changes and suggestions to each of the other four members work  and then email it back to its author and also the other members.

2.      All  changes or suggestions, as in all critique groups, should be constructive and supportive and   can be either accepted or rejected by the author.

3.      Although I am nowhere near an expert in any genre, I am least knowledgeable about poetry. I believe I would like to limit the genre to fiction and or memoirs but that is only a suggestion and as members of the group, we can make a group decision.

4.       The critique should be returned to the members in a timely manner, say three days. The author may ask questions about the suggestions or comments but cannot defend his/her work, after all he/she can take it or leave it.

So there it is folks. What do you think?

Please e-mail me or comment. If anyone would like to get in on this experiment, please let me know.

We need a name for the critique group. Suggestions?