II hope everyone’s been busy over the summer. The first step in self-publishing is to write and finish something. GLVWG members have hosted a couple of writing get-togethers, with another one coming up this week, in hopes of getting participants to do just that.
During the September meeting, we’ll be discussing the next stage in the process: critiquing. Who to get it from (and who to avoid), what advice to take (and what to ignore). Feedback is a crucial step if you want to connect with the reader. There are plenty of well-written books that no one buys. There are just as many badly written books that people fawn over. It isn’t all comma placement and pronoun confusion. Your writing has to engage the reader in a way that makes them want to keep turning the pages. Are your characters flat or exciting? Is your historical research accurate or did you get something critically wrong? Is your middle sagging like my Uncle Henry’s beer gut? Critique partners can help spot the flaws before you submit your work to an agent.
Hope to see you at September meeting.
GLVWG’s self-publishing project is open to any member in good standing. Entries are due on October 25th. We’re publishing two anthologies: a collection of short stories and a group of essays entitled, “Why We Write”.
Author Guidelines
The Why We Write book is nonfiction. Members submit one or two sentences on why they write and craft a short (400-500 words) essay on why they write what they write. (Sci Fi, Poetry, Journalism, Personal Essay, and so on) You can also pick a quote from a writer and craft an essay around it.
The fiction category is open to anything but, since this is a group project, no extreme violence, explicit sex, or overuse of profanity, please. Try to keep your stories under 2,500 words.
