1. Posting to the workshop does not automatically request editors be assigned to your piece. It is up to you to request an assigned edit specifically.
2. Posting to the workshop does not guarantee that anyone will or will not comment; members are encouraged but not required to participate.
3. It is your responsibility to communicate what kind of feedback you do or do not want. Unless otherwise noted, it is assumed that an author is fully open to critique of all aspects of the piece posted. If you only want feedback concerning something particular, or only want initial reactions without detailed feedback, or if you're liable to be offended/lose your motivation/feel sensitive about something you have posted, please put a note on the top of the piece at hand letting everyone know you're not ready for in-depth critique yet (that's totally fine - I've been there).
3b. Anyone here should understand the difference between constructive critique and being an asshole. You don't have to only say nice things, but there's a far cry between 'I think this would improve by strengthening yadda ya, here's my suggestion' and 'this sucks why did you write this'. If you have questions about the appropriateness of your feedback, don't hesitate to ask me or one of the other moderators. Anyone who posts something that has no purpose other than being down on the author of a piece will have a lot of trouble from me to deal with, trust me. I'm not a very nice person and I expect civility and respect to be maintained on my forum, period.
Assigned Edit
If you would like an assigned edit for your piece, please post a reply to the 'Editing Requests' thread found in the Workshop forum. Please post a reply for each piece you would like to have edited individually, so that you can change them when you've received the edits.
Assigned edits will be in-depth, thought-out critiques of a piece. Editors will have a week to do them, and it is expected that they will provide more than a paragraph or two of overall impressions. Be specific. In my experience, the best way to handle this is to paste the piece into a word-processor document, turn on track changes and make notes throughout (you could also use the comment function of many word processors to note things in the text as you read) as well as overall discussion of the piece added at the end of the document. The editor will then email the edited piece back to the author, which is a great time for dialog for clarifications of suggestions and things of that nature. You know, talk to each other people
the idea is that we will all help each other develop.I will assign a batch of edits every week, based on how many pieces my editing volunteers say they can take. As work gets posted in the Workshop and the Challenge forum and the requests come in, I'll go down the line, doing as many as I have editing slots for any given week, and we'll get through them at whatever rate we get through them (basically, no guarantee that your challenge piece WILL be edited by the time the challenge is over, or anything like that).
If you would like to BE an editor (and I would love you forever if you did), reply to THIS thread with your interest. I will put you in the editing group which will allow you access to the editing forum, which is where I will be assigning the edits every week. In your reply to be an editor, please include about how many pieces you can take on a weekly basis (for instance, I expect to be able to take on two or three a week if they're not more than 1.5k words long, less if they are, and more if we're in a bind). Also, if there is anything you prefer not to read (like very sexual, or very gory), let me know there too.
I would like to assign at least TWO editors for each requested piece, so that an author can have more than one perspective.
Lastly, if you have signed up to be an editor and need to take a week off, or for some reason need an edit that was assigned to you to be picked up by someone else, please private message me on the forum.
Thanks a bunch! Any questions, feel free to ask.
