Neophyte. Dabbler. Naif. Thank you, thesaurus.com, for those wonderful words of wisdom. I learned three new words today, and all of them describe me. Yay! A bit about me? I hate writing about myself because it makes me feel conceited, but I suppose I could give this a shot. Writing is, obviously, my life. When I'm not working on a project of my own, I'm critiquing someone else's. Sci-fi is my guilty pleasure, as is chocolate and pretty much anything else sugar related. Although I'm a perfectionist, I'm also a procrastinator--but I think most writers are guilty of that. Of course, I try to make time to write every day...but life has its way of screwing up plans, and I've finally learned to just take everything in stride. And if anybody's wondering, that was copied off of my profile page. I already had to go through writing about myself once...no more! Please, no more! So. Any tips for me? Anything you found out through your experiences on this website? Here's a specific question for you: When can I post a new thread (for instance, in the "Short Stories" forum under "The Writing Workshop")? I read the blog post that talked about having to write at least two good reviews, and I understand that. But who decides if the reviews are "good" or not, and how long does it usually take? Or, if you don't feel like answering any questions, just a simple "hello" would suffice...I like feeling loved! Thanks for reading. L a u r a
Hello Laura! Welcome to the forum To answer your question about posting work, "good" is referring to quality. All of us can read through peoples work and say, "yeah I liked it because it was funny." That's well and good and we'd get a confidence boost, but it's not a proper review and the writer isn't learning anything valuable. A review of someone’s work requires the reader (you) to give some constructive feedback about the stories structure, pace and flow or if the characters have depth or if the dialogue is interesting. That's what classifies as good. You don't have to be a professional writer to critique someone's work you just need to step back and look their work with an editing eye like you'd do with your own I hope that helps Good luck
Welcome to Writing Forums, Laura! I hope you find what you're looking for here, whatever your interests in writing. This forum aims to provide the best workshopping resources on the internet, and to that end we have a few rules which you should familiarise yourself with before you get stuck in. The main section of the site is the Writing Workshop, where members can post their writing in order to receive critique of their work. However, before we allow members to post their work, they must have met some basic requirments. Firstly, you must have been a member for fourteen days, and have made twenty posts on the forum overall (please note, posts in Word Games do not count towards this). This is so that members, when they post their work, have familiarised themselves with the forums and contributed to them (as well as hopefully learned something for themselves). Secondly, members must provide two constructive reviews of other people's work for each piece of their own that they wish to post. This is because we believe that the focus of workshopping should be equally upon giving reviews as receiving them, as they allow a writer to practice and improve their editing skills, which they can then apply to their own writing. Beyond the Writing Workshop, you will find that we have extensive forums for discussion of aspects of writing, as well as a community area for general discussion. We also run periodic short story and poetry contests, which are good for challenging yourself and expanding your skills. If you have any questions or problems, then the moderators (myself and Cogito) should be your first port of call. Any technical problems with the site itself should be directed to Daniel, the site administrator and owner. I would recommend you have a look over the rules so that you know what to expect, and what is expected. But aside from that, I hope you enjoy your time here. Banzai
Thanks for the feedback, Midnight_Adventurer! I would hope that my critiques fall under that category.
Banzai, that was the exact answer I was looking for. Thanks for the info! Gotta say that I'm impressed with the website so far, and I AM enjoying my time here...although I still have a lot to learn.
Welcome, Laura. I'm a procrastinator and have anything sugar related as a guilty - actually I don't feel guilty- pleasure too.
Tehe. Thanks for the smile. If there was a "like" button, I would press it. (Curse you, Facebook, for being at the back of my mind while I'm on a different website! I feel like I'm cheating on writingforms or something...)
