To submit your work for critique, please read and follow ALL of the following.

NEW: Please use this form to submit your work for critique!

  1. You must be comfortable with your submission being distributed, via email, to as many as 100 group members (usually the number is closer to 40). This does not imperil your copyright. An explanation of the legality of copyright would take far too long. If this makes you uncomfortable, please do not submit.
  2. We strongly recommend that you submit work that is publication-ready. This means you consider it a “final” draft, you have copy-edited for misspellings, grammatical errors, etc. You want to hear reader response to your best work, not a critique focused on spelling or grammar errors, or to hear suggestions for changes you already know you want to make. Please don’t submit rough drafts.
  3. You should have attended at least one meeting. You may submit work before attending. However, it may be held until you have attended at least one meeting.
  4. Prose submissions should be 4,000 words or less. If you are submitting poetry or screen/stage drama, aim for 16 pages or less. You may slightly exceed these lengths if you need to finish a sentence/paragraph/scene.
  5. Please save your work in Microsoft Word .doc format. We will accept PDF, but strongly prefer Word for compatibility across devices. Almost all word processors can save in this format, including Google Docs and OpenOffice.
  6. Include your name (or a pen name) and the title of the work (or “untitled”) in the document.
  7. If there is any explicit sex or violence in your submission, please indicate this at the top of the document, before the work begins. We do not censor work, but some members prefer not to read explicit content, and we respect their boundaries.
  8.  Many of our members mark-up files with notes, and like to email their comments. If you’d like to receive those comments, please include your email address in the document.
  9. Once you’ve done all of the above, use this form to submit your work.

Please note that submissions are not pre-read before being distributed for critique. We simply hold them in a queue, unread, until it’s time to distribute. Therefore, no favoritism or preference is given to submissions based on content. It also means you should double-check that you’re sending what you mean to send, because no one else will notice your mistake before it goes to the group.

Submissions are circulated via email for critique, typically 4-7 days prior to each meeting. Only members who have RSVP’d “YES” to the specific meeting will receive that email. Each meeting accommodates a limited number of critiques, so we do have a queue. In general we distribute submissions in the order they are received, with the following modifications:

  • Preference is given to first-time submitters. We try to get first-timers to the front of the queue when possible.
  • Members who have been critiqued recently will be moved behind members who have not been critiqued in a greater length of time.