Note about group transition period (8/25-9/23)
Hello!
Mighty Central Phoenix Writer's Workshop!
We are evolving! We are changing! Please come along with us!
As of September 23, we will no longer be on Meetup. Meetup is getting expensive and Discord seems a better fit for pricing, online communication, and maintaining an active, participating community. If you have attended group in the last 6 months, we will message you (via Meetup) the link to Discord in early September. If you haven't attended in 6 months, but want to stay involved, please attend group on a Tuesday before 9/22. We're going to rise anew with a new name and we will take suggestions at Tuesday meetings! See the event description for more details!
> We will still meet every Tuesday 5:30-8 pm at Valley Coffee to workshop writing. We will ask you to RSVP on Discord, or be there by 5:30 on Tuesday to sign up. We'll ask everyone to be there no later than 5:45, please; we know it's a struggle with traffic, but we're going to be moving to a more informal, opt-in group formation, so we want to form groups so we can get going right at 6 pm. There will be groups of no more than 4 people with words; each person will get 25 minutes. Please bring 5 copies if you plan to share work. People without words can fill these groups in. We'll work together to maintain a safe, healthy space.
> We invite all of you to invite any friend or writer who you think would enjoy our workshopping space to attend on Tuesdays.
> You'll see the familiar faces of Stephen, Lia, Virginia, Nikka, Richie, Claudia, Kara, and Jake around during this transition; hit them up with any questions!
This phase of our Mighty Central Phoenix Writer's Workshop has been EPIC, with so many books, works, performances and FRIENDSHIPS created; the next phase will bring a whole new set of enriching connections to our community; please join us and share your VOICE!!!
Note about current model (as we transition, what you see here will become more like what is described above, but we're taking a month to figure things out. Thank you!!)
Welcome to the Tuesday edition of the Central Phoenix Writing Workshop! Here's how we work:
We are open to all styles, genres, and forms of creative and non-creative writing. Just no hate speech, please. Our group is so successful because we treat each other with respect and trust.
The first half hour (5:30-6:00) is hanging out, getting situated, ordering food/drinks, and giving the moderator time to set up the subgroups.
You don't have to bring work to share in order to attend or participate. If you don't RSVP and enter word count below, please arrive by 5:45 to tell the moderator your word count. If you arrive later than 5:45, you'll be welcome to sit in, but we won't be able to read your piece, because we need time to balance word counts for each group. Thank you! To give everyone a chance to have their piece workshopped, we recommend limiting your word count to 2,000, but please, no more than 2,500.
At 6:00, we split into sub-groups. The assistant moderator for each group will ask each person to introduce themselves, then say a few things about Group.
Group goes like this: we ask the person if there's anything we need to know, what they're looking for in terms of feedback, the person passes their work out (we use hard copies to follow along while you're reading and take notes), and then they read. Reading aloud creates a more communal experience and helps people get better at reading; it also helps copy-edit/proof the work, too.
When the person is finished reading, we have a conversation. One person speaks at a time, giving feedback (things that worked/didn't work for them). When that person is finished, another person will start. If you want to talk while someone else is talking, just wait until they're finished or there's a pause and ask them if you can talk, at which point they can say yes or no. If they say yes, we'll make sure it gets back to them. If they say no, we'll make sure it gets back to you. Super easy. The author is encouraged to talk too, but not too much.
If you think that you don't know how to give criticism, don't worry about it. Other people will say things that you can agree or disagree with. We'll ask you questions. You'll tell us what you think. Keep coming back. You'll get better at it. As will your writing. Praise and adulation is always nice, too.
We take a short break for bathrooms and text messaging around 7:00 p.m. and finish at 8 pm.
See you soon!
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A few notes:
- HEALTH: We strongly encourage everyone to protect vulnerable participants from illness by being up to date on vaccinations, staying home when feeling ill, and wearing masks when community levels are high for contagious airborne infectious diseases. It’s the honor system.
- HARD COPIES: Bring 5 to 6 hard copies of your work. Please keep your word count under 2500 words to help the group stay on time. If you are bringing work, please enter the word count of your piece in your RSVP to help us assign groups.
- SENSITIVITY: While great writing is often about tragedy, pain, and therefore ripe with heavy content and themes, we also want to recognize and respect that there might be specific scenes or pieces that we bring that could trigger other writers’ past trauma if they are caught unaware. One way we can respect each other is to provide a trigger warning if a piece contains graphic images of rape, extreme violence, child abuse, suicide, substance abuse, sex, or death. If you bring a piece with sensitive content, please include that information in your RSVP with word count and/or let the moderator at group know. We hope to give each member that attends as much information as we can, so that, with topics such as these, readers have opt/out or opt/in choices, and writers are able to share work with a group whose members are open and prepared to give great feedback. Thank you for your consideration.
