Minicon Writers' Workshop

[naomikritzer]

Minicon this year will be having a writers' workshop, modeled on the (highly successful) writers' workshop offered at Wiscon. Participants will send in manuscripts that will be critiqued by other participants, plus one pro, in small groups.

The workshop will take place Friday, March 25th, 10 a.m. until 1 p.m. (Bring a snack or eat a late breakfast. Or both, if you're me.)

The current volunteers to lead workshops are me, Katya Reimann, and Lyda Morehouse. More will be recruited if needed.

If you want to participate, here's what you need to do.

1. Register for Minicon.

2. Make five copies of the manuscript you want critiqued.

* This can be either a complete short story or the beginning of a novel, but either way it can be no more than 7500 words. If it's the beginning of a novel, it can be Chapter One, or Chapters One and Two, or Chapters One through Three, depending on how short your chapters are, but please use your common sense and don't break off mid-sentence because that's where you hit the 7500 word limit. Also, it does need to be consecutive chapters from the beginning, not Chapter One and then Chapter Twenty-Five.

* It also needs to be in standard manuscript format -- double-spaced, in a normal font, with page numbers, etc.

* Make sure your name is on the manuscript, and your full postal address, so that we can send you the manuscripts you're supposed to read and critique. Also, please include your phone number and/or e-mail address.

3. Send those five copies to Lisa Freitag, c/o DreamHaven Books, 912 West Lake Street, Minneapolis, MN 55408-2857. Put ATTN: MINICON WRITERS' WORKSHOP on the envelope, preferably in big bold letters so that it will be easily put in the correct location by busy bookstore staff. If you want to participate in the workshop, you need to have your manuscripts in by February 19th.

Please feel free to e-mail me with questions.

I apologize in advance for the fact that there will almost certainly be some mix-ups, because none of us have run one of these before.

One mix-up is that we didn't get this information out until now. Please feel free to pass it along to whoever you think might be interested.

Thank you!

Comments

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

I assume that it's okay to drop copies off at DreamHaven, rather than mailing them?

[naomikritzer]

Yes. But you should still probably put them in an envelope and write ATTN: MINICON WRITERS' WORKSHOP on the outside.

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

If you tend to write very short (1000 words) stories, would it be okay to submit more than one?

[naomikritzer]

I think my answer to that would have to be no. This may be a personal quirk, but for me, while it is somewhat more time-consuming to critique a long story than a short story, it would be a lot more time-consuming to critique two short stories than one long story, if I'm going to do a good job of thinking about what works and what doesn't.

I'm open to reconsidering, though, if other people want to pop in and tell me that I'm the exception rather than the rule in this respect. I think it depends in part on whether you tend to do more line-editing or more structural suggestions, when you do critiques.