How do you feel about bi-MONTHly submissions? - please read

[M]

Ok, my two cents... what "if" we thin things down a little.  What if we made two separate groups.  This would require two forums I imagine so we don't get confused.  We already have a lot of people (which is great!) and making things smaller will help I think.

Here are the groups:
1. Those that can and WILL submit and review WEEKLY.  These the the writers that Raethe is talking about (forgive me Raethe if I am thinking of someone else).  That way, it's like a real writing group where you submit each week and get critiqued.  Since not everyone falls into this category, there will be less work to read and therefore less stress on everyone.

2. The other group would be the "submit when you can" group.  This group can submit on deadlines if they want to keep motivated but don't have to unless they want to.  I don't think this group would suffer lack of critique, if anything they would probably get faster critiques.

That's my two cents.  Make is simple with as little confusion as possible. 

[wcarter4]

I would never be able to keep up with bi-monthly submissions with my schedule and I think my ability to give decent critiques with my inbox overflowing from that many submissions would suffer as well. If we go to that we probably need a RE group A and group B forum. Either way, I would only make about half the deadlines. Once a month is as good as I can get until May. After that, I could handle twice a month.

What about once every three weeks?

[AvalonDreamer]

Splitting the group is a fundamentally bad idea, both in terms of reprecussions, and the administrative issues that would come along with it. What if for a month I got busy, and decided I couldn't or didn't want to submit, but then for the next two weeks, I felt like turning stuff in?

Would I switch back and forth between groups?

Then we also loose the advantage of diversity, with two different groups. If I'm in one group, and Chaos is in another, and I like his story and want to keep up the critiques on it, I can't; which means he just lost a potential reader and someone who WANTS to keep critiquing his work.

Working on semi-spontaneous weekly submissions gives everyone a fair chance to get reviewed, and anyone who has the time to submit, should have the time to review - so the sumbit/review ratio remains at a rough 1:1 (AT LEAST). It more easily fosters the "I want to be a reader" people as well; technically they're members of the group, just ones that don't submit (and when they do, they'll be first up!).

Points are nice, and everyone trying to adjust the cycle frequency to their schedules is to be anticipated, but they can't work: the first takes faaaaar too much administrative back-end, and the second... blegh. The weekly opt-in requires very little: enough to maintain the current list, as well as deciding how many people can submit weekly, and picking out people who should get priority based on submissions.

VOTE THE AVALON METHOD!

[M]

What if for a month I got busy, and decided I couldn't or didn't want to submit, but then for the next two weeks, I felt like turning stuff in?

Wou

Do we really need to cater to people who can't commit?  Sorry Avalon, but we shouldn't have to wait on people who waffle.  I understand people are busy and have lives (trust me I have my own problems to take care of), but hopefully we are all doing this to become professionals, so lets start acting like them.

Then we also loose the advantage of diversity, with two different groups. If I'm in one group, and Chaos is in another, and I like his story and want to keep up the critiques on it, I can't; which means he just lost a potential reader and someone who WANTS to keep critiquing his work.

Soooo...nothing is stopping you from sending him a critique of your work if  you like his stuff.  Have him send it to you and critique it.  When you join a real writing group, you have to take what you get. I agree diversity is great, but if we pick and choose what we want to read, then...well...those critiques "can" be soft.  I don't much care for fantasy, but I have liked reading some of the work here. 

For those of us who want to get critiqued regularly, we just can't wait for those who aren't committed (or better said, don't have the time) to step up and be in a real writing group. 

Sorry Avalon, nothing personal.  Just my thoughts.  I do like your ideas, don't get me wrong.

[AvalonDreamer]

It's not a matter of a lack of commitment, or people who waffle - most people here are students in college with at least one job, some with two, or they're adults with children and husbands/wives along side their careers. If any of us had the ability to massively commit, we'd join up with live writing groups in our area.

I do want to do this professionally, when I'm good enough to make a life at it. Until then, my writing schedule is subject to the whims of my living schedule - classes, work shifts, grocery shopping, family stuff, etc.

That aside, some people don't grind out their writing as fast, while some people pop out an artistic chapter every day; others prefer to write novellas, standalones and short stories, thus they are prone to longer gaps between submissions while they plot and outline their next work, while novelists and epic writers have something new out every week, almost without fail.

We've considered 2 groups just because of the size, but we rejected that on the grounds that any split we tried to force would just be ignored. People would cross-distribute and cross-critique anyway, and all of that work would end up being moot.

[Miyabi]

I am totally up for this.

[M]

Before I go stick my foot in my mouth any further, it just dawned on me that we should probably at least do a poll and see how many people want to even join a weekly writing group?  I shouldn't make assumptions based on only a few people (besides myself) wanting this.  There might not be enough to do my Group A - Group B idea.

[Silk]

I agree with Avalon. Of course, I've been against splitting the group for the very start.

For one thing, splitting the forum into two actual forums would be problematic because we can't do it ourselves. Fell and Sprig have already taken the time to set this one up for us/put up with us and I really would hate to impose on them any more.

Splitting the group that way would also mean we'd have people who would never get to read each other's stuff, and people who would never get critiques by some people. One of the strongest points of a group like this one is that you learn so much from reading, critiquing, and getting critiqued by a wide variety of people. I think we should do whatever we can to deserve that.

As much as I like the idea of everybody just submitting on a specific date - takes very little to maintain it that way - I really do think Avalon's idea is the best compromise.  I think that keeping a balance between getting people to write and making sure everyone gets decent crits is the most important thing here, and I think a weekly group would overwhelm a lot of people on both counts very quickly.

Because of the creative writing classes I'm enrolled in I've been basically submitting and critting every week for my classmates, and believe me, it's hard to keep up with. And my classes probably had half the people we do here at RE.

[M]

If you can't beat them, join them.  I'm in.  Avalon's idea is a good one.  I still wish we could split the groups, but I see the logic behind not doing it.  Good points everyone.  Soooo....how do we reach consensus on this?  It seems most (those who have posted) seem to favor Avalon's approach.  For now, my vote is cast there (unless someone else has any other ideas?).

[Silk]

Okay, let me see if I can do a brief recap of everything that's been thrown out. I think we've already bashed out the pros and cons so I'm just going to mention each idea that's been said. Will probably make it easier to get a consensus if we have it all in one play to look at.

There's our current "official" situation (not for much longer, I'm guessing) where we each submit once monthly, half the group on the 1st of a month, and half the group on the 15th.

There's Wilson's idea wherein we have different submission cycles for each "group" that feels they can only submit weekly, bi-monthly, monthly, whatever.

Avalon's idea is that we have people "apply" to submit by Thursday of a given week, to send out on that Saturday. (I think I'll add something to this if we choose this one, everybody HAS to submit at least once a month, as per our original plan.) Chaos and I will pick who gets to submit each week if too many apply, priveleging those who haven't had critiques in a while.

Chaos suggested we have "submission points"; we each get three a month and can use as many as one or all three each month. If we don't use our points, they carry over into the next month.

M suggested we split the group into two: people who feel they can submit and critique weekly and people who feel they can only do so monthly (or whenever).

I think that's covered everything we've talked about. If I've missed anything, I'm sorry, I'm going from memory.  General consensus is towards Avalon's idea so far it seems, and that would be my vote too. So, what does everyone think? And remember, whatever we do will be trial runs. If it doesn't work we don't have to stick to it. There are a lot of us and we're just starting and we're inevitably going to hit some snags.

Awww, Reading Excuses is experiencing its first growing pains!

(Um... yeah... ignore that last remark. I'mma go write essays now...)

[M]

I vote for Avalons....Raethe...you're cute, glad you are a mod.   

[Silk]

Haha. Thank you? ^^

(I think I can count on one hand the times I've ever been called "cute". I find it very entertaining. ^^)

For everyone still following: Ben, who is much more forward-thinking than I am, has started a poll, so make sure you have your say.

[M]

Haha. Thank you? ^^

You question my sincerity? lol I was serious, you are cute.  Look, you even use symbols like these: ^^  Kind looks like cat ears...which are also considered cute.  Uh oh...are we noticing a trend?  lol

[Silk]

Question your sincerity? I would never!

No, it's just that the adjectives people usually apply to me start at "psycho" and get less polite from there.

[little wilson]

haha...I've been called psycho, too! And the devil....

Oh, and my idea was actually slightly different than that....it was figuring out how often people were going to submit, and then splitting everybody up between 4 submission dates that would evenly distribute the submissions per week....Or something....I explained it in the *pretty* Office example...