May meeting: Writing critique

It’s that time of year again.  No, not taxes, baseball season, Cinco de Mayo, National Scurvy Awareness Day (May 2nd, look it up), yadda yadda.  It’s the annual Buckeye Crime Writers writing critique!  Where you submit your work to a bunch of sadistic creeps your fellow writers!  To have them pick it apart and rip it to pieces carefully read it and offer constructive criticism!  So that you can go home and cry yourself to sleep gain useful advice and improve your writing!  Hey, wait!  Hold up!  Where you goin,’ Owen?

No, really, this is what you’ve been waiting for.  One of our biggest and most popular events of the season.  If you’ve been working on a manuscript, novella, short story, rough draft, revision, whatever, this is el momento de la verdad.  The way it works: 

  • Rule #1:  submit up to roughly 10 pages (more or less) of whatever you’re working on.  Send it to buckeyecrimewriters@gmail.com by Wednesday, 5/8/19. 
  • Rule #2:  if you submit, you will then receive copies of everyone else who submits material.  Why?  Because if you want to be reviewed, you also need to review.
  • Rule #3:  meeting is Saturday, 5/11/19, 12:30 – 3:00, at the Northwest Worthington Library (2280 Hard Road).  Show up with printed copies of everything you’ve reviewed, with your comments.  After each submittal is discussed by the group, you’ll give your copy to the particular author.  Hint:  using the ‘comment’ feature in Word and then printing submissions is an easy way of doing things.  Or you can print first and handwrite comments as you read.  Your call.
  • Rule #4:  be cool.  Critique professionally and accept critiques of your work with the same composure.  It’s all good, we’re here to help each other, and then we all go out afterwards to eat, drink and be merry.

Here are the guidelines:

  • Everyone who submits a writing sample will receive all the samples from each participant, and you’re kindly expected to provide feedback for each. 
  • Writing samples should be submitted in Time New Roman or Courier font, 12 pt., with 1″ margins.
  • Your Name and Title should appear in the header.
  • Pages should be numbered and double-spaced.

So that’s it.  Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.  Show your work to your peers, get some good advice and progress as a writer.  And remember:  we’re taking June off (our summer break) so you’ll have you’ll have lots of time to think, ponder and revise as you develop that million-dollar hit with your new-found knowledge.  So come out and waste a Saturday afternoon in the literary arts with us.  And until then?  Keep writing.

April meeting: Linda Kass

Linda Kass
Linda Kass, author and owner of Gramercy Books

We had a fantastic visit in March with author and professor Katharine Weber. For our next meeting, we have another treat – author and owner of Gramercy Books Linda Kass!

Linda Kass is the founder and owner of Gramercy Books in Bexley, Ohio, an independent bookstore that opened in December of 2016. She grew up on Columbus’ east side. After receiving an MA in Journalism from Ohio State, she spent her early career as a reporter for regional and national magazines. She worked in Detroit and New York in corporate communications, then returned to Columbus three decades ago where she resumed her writing career, in both nonfiction and fiction. Her work has been published in TIME, The Detroit Free PressColumbus Monthly, Full Grown People, and forthcoming in The MacGuffin. Her first novel, Tasa’s Song, set in eastern Poland during WWII, garnered widespread praise following its May 2016 publication. She has served, and continues to serve, in numerous leadership roles in the education, arts and literary communities, while building her bookstore into a destination for people throughout central Ohio.

Linda will join us April 20 in the Bexley Public Library, conveniently across the street from Gramercy Books. The meeting begins at 12:30 and wraps at about 2:30. We hope to see you there!