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Seeking a SciFi and Fantasy Writing Group with active members, firm deadlines

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Jason R. Peters:
Fellow writers,

I am an amateur (thus far) novelist and short story writer seeking an active and dedicated writing group for consistent feedback. (Read: I am NOT content to have a half-arsed writing career and I want people to rip my work to shreds until I learn my lessons and get it right.)

I have recently finished first draft of a ~50k novel which needs a lot of improvement. I regularly write short stories and a few other projects, each of varying (in my opinion) quality. I have several other projects on the horizon, including non-fiction.

I'm located in Hillsborough, NC (Chapel Hill area) if there is any chance of a real-life such group; I expect that's unlikely, so a digital group works fine.

What matters most to me is that the group I join be active and involved. I've joined a few online writing groups and they lasted for about 3 internal submissions before crumbling off into the nether. If there's an existing group with an established record of submissions and feedback which wouldn't mind having me, I'm all in.

I need experience submitting on firm deadlines and having experienced critics offer suggestions. I am plenty critical myself, so I'm best suited for a group that values honesty over political correctness. My own critique takes the form of "this was my experience when reading this" rather than "this is what you should do instead"; description rather than prescription.

I am dead serious about developing my writing into a real career, and I want to interact with others who feel the same. This is NOT a hobby.

Please reply to this if interested or email [email protected].

Thanks in advance for considering.

fireflyz:
There is a writing group called reading excuses on this forum.  They allow new postings once a week.  Feedback is consistent, but small.  I'd say 2-5 responses seems to be par for the course.  If you're looking for more than that, good luck.  The holy grail is a group of ten to fifteen people who are experts just waiting to read your work and only your work.  In practice everyone wants thier work to be read and most don't have the time to read a dozen 5k chapters while working on thier own in thier busy lives.  The group on here seems to offer honest, good critiques.

Silk:
Reading Excuses has been going for nearly two years now, and I don't think it's going anywhere anytime soon. Like Fireflyz said, the number of critiques you'll get each week will probably be fairly small--2-5 is a pretty good ballpark--but it will be consistent. And yes, people here are very good about giving honest and thoughtful critiques.

The one area in which I'm not sure this group is for you is the "firm deadlines" bit. Submission dates are every Monday, which means that we do have deadlines of a sort, but you choose what weeks you want to submit and there's no minimum participation, so there aren't any consequences for not making a particular deadline (aside from the occasional person making fun of you if you didn't submit when you said you would. But nicely, of course).

Feel free to hop down to the Reading Excuses forum, though, if you want to see what we're all about.

Ottilie:
This seems like something I would love to get involved with, but I'm concerned about idea theft. *hugs tin-foil hat over head*

Is that a valid concern, or am I being paranoid?

fireflyz:
The way it works is that you ask to join, provide an email account, and the submissions are sent via email.  Comments are posted to the forum, but not actual content.  As far as idea theft goes, that could potentially happen, but is doubtful.  If your novel is 120k words long and you submit 5k words a week, that's still months that someone would have to wait to have your novel.  That's provided you submit every week.  Also, if someone has to steal your novel, I doubt they'd have the skill to pull it off.  It's a valid concern, but ideas are cheap.  I could tell someone all the nitty gritty details about ideas behind a novel I'm working on and they still wouldn't write what I would because everyone's different.  Ultimately, the choice is up to you.

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