The focus of the Colorado Springs Fiction Writer’s Group is to give the writing community a peer environment in which to share concepts, works in progress, projects, and promote themselves online through sample works and podcasting (beginning late 2007).

At the monthly meetings, members may submit poetry or prose fiction to the group. During the course of the next month, the submissions are given a written page-by-page critique, including an overall impression of the work on the last page and then signed by the reviewer. The work will be orally discussed at the next meeting. Each member will be allowed the opportunity to express their feelings on the work’s strengths and weaknesses. Ideas, suggestions and compliments are given to the submitting member.

Submitting members bring in enough copies of their work for every member to recieve one, plus a few extra for visitors. Every member will grab a copy. These submissions will be read during the course of the month and critiqued at the next meeting (this meeting’s critiques are of last month’s submissions).

The Vice President will announce that the meeting’s starting and introductions will be made all around (Who they are, what they write, anything interesting such as an award, publication, etc.). A request is made for who wants to be critiqued first. The Vice President will start the oral critiques (only covering an overall opinion, not a page-by-page) offering constructive suggestions and praising good writing. Often a discussion or ideas will be bounced around during a critique. This is common. The group continues the critique process by going clockwise around the room. Once the critiques on that particular submission are done, the person who was just critiqued chooses the next submission and begins the process for the next member. This is repeated until all of the submissions are reviewed.

At the end of the meeting visitors may take a copy of whatever submissions are left. If a submission runs out before you have a chance to get a copy, let the group’s Vice President or Officer know and they’ll give you a temporary username and password to access the submissions online.

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