There is a plan being hatched to fix the site.  It is in the very first stages, and I am hesitant to talk too loudly (if at all) about whether it will all work.  But I am working on re-energizing our social networks, so if there is a relaunch in the we will have places to rally support.  so until more is known about how this will all work out, lets keep the writ our secret, but also enjoy our two new venues: twitter and facebook

(Tim Greenlaw co-authored this update)

    At the beginning of July we got a dire message from our web guru stating that our plans to build the site of our dreams would require some serious cash coming in - much more, in fact, than we had anticipated.  It seems there are some possibilities, but there is a lot of work between here and there. This note to the community is to give an up-date on what we are thinking about and some of the issues we have faced so far in the process.  This is also for us to stay grounded and make sure that we are not losing sight of the big picture while working out the little details.  What follows will be some of the issues we have faced and solutions we see so far. 

Identifying the Obstacles

    At Writ Summit 2008, the current staff and the original founders met to discuss the direction of the site.  Sarah expressed some serious concerns that the collapse of the current infrastructure is imminent, and that if we can’t get this going in the right direction, the workshop will die. She told us a few possible scenarios that could follow, and one was that The WritOracle would become a static memorial to the dream of an interactive writing community that strove to bring quality creative writing out from the walls of universities and into the world for everyone with an idea and a keyboard.

      Obviously, that’s wasn’t our first choice of the possible outcomes.  Of all the options discussed, the one that had the best combination of philosophy and feasibility was a non-profit.  We decided to try to incorporate as a non-profit organization to keep the site going.  The not-for-profit incarnation of the site may be the last chance,  but it might also be our best chance.  It would not put us in a position where we would be beholden to other financial interests, ones that would likely jeopardize the integrity of the site - art, after all, is rarely profitable.  It offers us several financial incentives, including tax-exempt status, and opens us up to a lot of potential money available in the form of grants.  Joe and Tim took up the task of researching the steps to take to formalize the organization as a legally-recognized tax-exempt non-profit, and to find grants that might be available to us once we’re an official non-profit organization. 

Plans

    As we work through this process we are using the Writ Summit notes as our guide and are trying to stay true to what we all want from this site, and in listening to our members, it sounds like they want the same things, too.   The heart of the site is the workshop, and if we can get it right, all of the other goals for the site’s growth and expansion will evolve naturally around it.  We’ve been noticing for months that things on the workshop have been slowing down, and we began to identify concrete problems in April.  In May we met to discuss them, and this summer has been a race to get ahead of the curve again before we lose our most loyal members.

    The time-line for building the organizational structure is looking like two to three months to write and submit paperwork to the government.  Once that happens, there will be a new-look temporary site that will attempt to give some new energy to the community.  We will also begin to solicit micro-donations from the community.   Besides giving us a head-start on fund-raising, it shows other prospective donors that we’re serious and that other people believe in us.  The winter will be used for grant research and exploring funding.  Hopefully by March we will be ready to apply for a major grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, which can fund an infrastructure of the site that will last. 

Staff

    Throughout this we have referred to core staff.  We wanted people to know who ‘we’ refers to, and who you can complain to.  The attendees of the Writ Summit were Julie K, Joe, Jeremiah, Julian, Sarah, and Tim. If you’re curious about who we are, shoot us an email, and we’ll fill you in on everything you ever wanted to know about the history of The Writ and the future of the community. Right now if you have any input about the site, or ideas of where we could get $20-50,000 to keep the site going, the two people you should contact are Joe Gilbert: joe@thewrit.org, or Tim Greenlaw: timgreenlaw@gmail.com. 

    If anyone has any concerns about what we are up to, or wants any of the details/thinking behind what we are doing, please let us know.  We want to do this right, and are taking our time to give the community the best opportunity to not only survive, but thrive well beyond any of us.

Poet Frank Bidart, in an interview in a recent issue of Tin House, addresses the satisfaction one can get in giving meaningful feedback. Referring to his closeness to Robert Lowell in the late years of the poet’s life, Bidart says,

The fact that I, a kid from Bakersfield, could make comments to him about his poetry that seemed to him useful and helpful was an enormous event in my life. It was really transformative. There’s immense pleasure in being of use, partly because it says something about one’s own capacities. [italics mine]

I feel the same thing whenever I manage to give really good feedback, especially when I believe the writer to be a stronger writer than me. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy commenting on pieces by all levels of writers, because it’s very rewarding to help beginning writers avoid the common missteps and see them progress in leaps and bound through intermediate skill levels rather than the slower learning curve of trial-and-error.

But the reasons that they are rewarding are different. I feel that one informs the other. By striving to help improve writers that are ahead of my own progress as a writer, I am working harder and thinking more critically, and becoming a better writer for it. And when a writer takes a suggestion to heart, there’s a validation and vindication for me – a sense of, “Hey, I can do this. I know what I’m talking about.” Every time I comment, I feel a little more sure of myself, and I want to do it more.

It’s nice to say nice things, and it’s important to – it’s important to remember that any creative person putting their work forward is brave and vulnerable, and they also are looking for the same sense of validation for encouragement. But doing that alone will not make either of you better writers. As a commenter, don’t be afraid to critically tackle something you think might be better than anything you could ever write, just because you don’t think you should be qualified to do so. If you can say anything about it, you’re qualified. And as a writer, be open to suggestions from readers of all levels. You might find out things you take for granted, and you’ll be better able to put yourself inside the minds of your audiences, whomever they may be.

Here’s a website I found today:

http://spellcheckplus.com/

It’s an online spell-checker.  Common sense would lead me to hope that most people on here, being proficient enough with a computer to set up an account here, would probably have a good word processing program with an automatic spell-checker - heck, even Firefox spell-checks these days and is correcting me as I type this.

But in reality, people can, from time to time, post things in the workshop full of errors.  No, spell-checkers aren’t foolproof.  No, they don’t account for intentional straying from rules for artistic purposes.  No, they can’t do dialect.  But, those have been the case a minority of the time, from what I can tell.  Spell-checkers aren’t able to help you if you’re not willing to use them.

No one’s a perfect speller or grammar guru.  But technology is good these days, and resources are at our fingertips, and it’s easy to get pretty close.  The workshop is here as a resource for everybody, but that doesn’t mean it should be used as a proofreading.  If you can fix up the spelling and grammar and punctuation before posting something on the workshop, you will get better feedback, period.  You will have more readers, and more readers will read all the way to the end.  If a reader happens to notice an honest mistaken use of a homonym, they usually point it out, but generally it’s along with a substantial comment on the meat of the piece.

The other benefit from an online spell-checker, and this particular site, I should mention, is its utility to non-native English speakers.  Having tried, with varying degrees of success, to learn three other languages, I can appreciate the level of difficulty in making oneself understood at all, much less to write creatively in another language.  This site, (again, http://spellcheckplus.com/ ) is aimed specifically at ESL writers, although it can easily be toggled to give advice geared more to native English speakers.  With our humble little site becoming more global all the time, we’re going to have increasingly more writers with other first languages.  And while we don’t now have the same infrastructure set up outside of English language writing, we can do our best to help non-native speakers become better writers in English.  Be kind with your comments, but don’t be shy about addressing common mistakes.  English is a complicated language with complicated rules and terrible exceptions to all of them.  It’s a nightmare to learn, even as a first language.  Anyone remember spelling tests as a kid?  You don’t need ‘em in Spanish, because Spanish spelling makes sense!

Anyway…

It helps everyone to spell-check your writing before posting it.  So spend the extra minute and make it pretty.  Thanks.

Hey there to all you fiction writers!  Feeling unappreciated?  Me too!  That’s why I’ll again be spending significant time in the workshop focusing just on fiction.  There’s not a lot of it on there, and even less with comments.  As a fiction writer myself, I know how frustratring it is to spend days, weeks, even months working on a short story, then posting it and…nothing happens.  So, let me say now that I’ll be doing my best to make sure every short story gets at least one meaningful constructive critique.  Hopefully this will encourage all you fiction writers to get back in there, writing and posting your short stories, then re-writing and re-posting them until the cows come home. 

(And if you feel like helping me out with this admittedly thankless task, by all means, please comment away on the stories by your peers!  They love it!  And maybe then they’ll read your stuff, too!)

Beardedly yours,

Joe G

joe@thewrit.org