Whether you’ve been writing for years, or have yet to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), our intro workshop, Crafting & Critique will help you take your writing to the next level. We make time in the majority of these workshops meetings for free writing and/or work on your established work in progress (W.I.P.), if you have one. We also learn about giving and receiving literary critique. (It’s not as scary as it sounds, and it’s an indispensable step in the process of improving your writing.) When you take part in a critique community, you learn not only from the suggestions you receive on your own writing, but also from the suggestions given to other writers in the group. The payoffs include heightened inspiration, improved first drafts and a more objective eye, even for one’s own work.

In Crafting and Critique, we’ll foster an expanded comfort level with giving and receiving literary critique. We’ll also introduce and familiarize all participants with the online critique platform Scribophile.com used in all our workshops. The first few weeks of this workshop focus on attaining a comfort level with both the Scribophile platform and our fellow participants. During the last several weeks, we’ll begin offering critique on each others’ work and hopefully spark a lot of dynamic inspiration as well as the desire to continue working in and expanding our local writing workshop community.