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.
