Hi Everyone,

If you  tried to access The Writ this morning, you may have been surprised to learn that we destroyed the workshop in favor of becoming a PayPal phishing site.  Unforunately, this strategic business move (that I’m proud to say I had absolutely nothing to do with) failed to produce revenue for The Writ staff, and we have shut the operation down.  You’ll have to take your paypal payments over to PayPal.com from now on.

No, but seriously… some evil fingers slithered into our site through an unsecured script (my money is on that old forum, and all traces of it have now been removed from the system), and wreaked some havoc on us.  We’ve 80% recovered, but I could use your help tracking down that last 20%.

If anything is still broken, please comment and tell me about it so I can try to track down the unbroken files.

Thanks!

Sarah

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

Hey WRIToricians! We’re now accepting submissions for the Spring 2008 edition of WRIToracle! Here’s how to put your writing in front of our editors’ eyes:

1. Log into My Writ (or register for an account if you’re new).
2. Choose Add Writing from the My Writing menu.
3. Follow the instructions there to add your latest and greatest writing to the workshop.
4. Choose Submit for Issue from the My Writing menu.
5. Select your two best pieces of work from the workshop.
   
6. Click Submit.

Your pieces will be reviewed by our editing staff and considered for the next issue of WRIToracle.

Please note that we only consider pieces of writing that have been added to the workshop and marked as submissions. We’ve also emptied the inbox of past submissions, so your only competition is the people who submit their work now.

If you have any questions about the upcoming issue or would like to help with it, please contact JulieK at juliek at thewrit dot org.

Over the past few days, when I’ve been stimulated by the reorganization of the writ.org, I’ve been thinking of Writoracle and what direction things could take. To that End I would like to keep this entry and its contents for links and discussion concerning how other online and print journals are looking at the relationship of writer / editor, submissions, and journalistic vision.

I will try not to throw other peoples arguments and views in without chiming in, but here are some of the writings I’ve found online in the last few days that I suggest people read:

|: Albums vs. Singles @ tier 3.

||:Journal Bill of Rights @ Rhubarb is Susan

Both these entries work on framing the importance of journals as a relationship. The discussion at Tier 3 focuses more on the relationship of journal readers to poets. It is important in the flood of writing experienced at the writ.org and elsewhere that we realize that poetry is doing just fine, a sentiment expressed by current poet laureate Charles Simic in a NYTimes interview. I understand that as a venue for extremely fresh writers it is difficult to focus in on just a few, but with our “unlimited” space comes a chance for highlighting more writers and artists. We are not limited to paper and should not feel hemmed in by those restrictions.

Rhubarb focuses in on the relationship of poets and editors. I assert that it is much more difficult to give due to poets with a larger sampling of their work if the poet does not take the time to craft a mini-collection worth the due giving. When so many online and print journals are staffed by volunteers I feel that it is well stated to give them a little respect by taking the time to honestly tailor submitted work.

I feel at the unique juncture of the writ readers, writers, and editors are more connected as a community than generally found. I hope that by having an open discussion we can solidify these bonds positively and bring the community even closer together.

Since this took me three %#&$#*@ years to figure out, I’d just like to publicly announce that I fixed the $&#@!% email notifications for comments!

The links in those emails now work.

BOO-YAH!

(For those who haven’t followed development, the current version of The Writ was programmed by someone who’s no longer involved in the project, and a handful of odd little glitches have been eluding me for years.  But we’re going to migrate the system to something far more awesome, so this is really just a temporary victory.  The real excitement is coming soon…)

Attention WRIToricians! We have a new fearless leader! JulieK has generously (and valiantly) stepped up to help us navigate this transitional period by overseeing the next issue of WRIToracle.

Do you remember JulieK?

Quick Writstory lesson: Way way back in the day, when we were receiving submissions via email and editing by candlight with stacks of paper and glasses of Two Buck Chuck, we had this grand idea that if we could round up some money, maybe we could pay a programmer to build us a writing workshop, so people could upload their own writing and comment on each others’ work.

We all scratched our heads and said aloud, “But who will give us money?”

Then JulieK entered the picture and said, “Oh, I can get that for you!” You see, JulieK was in charge of the Student Press Organization at the University of New Hampshire, and she had connections. Several minor battles later, we got funding, and JulieK was designated as our Goddess.

And so, with that in mind, I bring you (drum roll please!) JulieK (with her version of the story)….

hi writ peoples,

i’m julie a/k/a juliek. my involvement with thewrit started when i was doing double duty as the student press organization (spo) director and the business director for aegis (literary magazine) at unh when a group of scraggly writers–chap books in hand–came to me and said, “we have an idea”. i helped the fabulous four to get some funding for the birth of the website and then…i forgot about it! a few years ago i became more involved in the workshop, mostly editing. you may have seen my comments around. now i’m back and in full force as your new editor-in chief!

thewrit has had a few facelifts over the years and its long overdue for a major surgical procedure, so i’m super excited that sarah is again in the picture and blogging a bajillion words a minute, while reciting spoken word out of one side of her mouth and drinking tea from the other, all while she does a tap dance, and fixes the bloopers on thewrit website. yes, she’s just that amazing.

so, as the new editor-in-chief, i’m going to need your help. i’m going to be overseeing the publication portion of thewrit (thewritoracle) and i need writers and editors to work on the next issue. we don’t have any firm publication deadlines right now, but we are definitely looking for ideas for articles, artists/writers to interview, people to write/edit articles, community stories/events, dialectic essays (for the dialectical corner), and any other ideas for articles you want to see in the next issue. so please email me if you have idea or if you want to write or edit. it’s ok if you want to write something, but don’t have an idea or vice versa!

i’m super excited to get this community more connected and expand everything.

any suggestions are more than welcome. we’re blogging about everything here, so leave us comments!

hope to hear from you!

-juliek
juliek@thewrit.org

p.s. the no caps is a style thing–get used to it!

It’s a balancing act: providing a safe and supportive space to inexperienced and emerging writers, while fostering an environment that values skill and quality. What a beautiful vision!

And what a great way to create friction within the community… A community focused entirely on quality becomes elitist, while a community focused entirely on newbies becomes chaos. It will always be a balancing act, and it will never be quite right. Friction is a necessary part of growth.

What’s The Writ about to you? How do you want us to handle this balance?

Wow, you guys are coming up with some brilliant ideas! Thank you! This is exactly what I was hoping for!

Except… you feel a little constrained, stuck down there in the comments, don’t you? I’m sorry about that. You can come out now. How about you register and log in and post some new entries, and then other people can comment on them, and then we can really call this a community blog? It sounds like a good idea to me.

I only have two ground rules.

1. This blog is for discussing The Writ from an organizational perspective. Please do not post your creative writing (you can do that here) or any non-Writ-related things (you can do that here).
2. No whining or demanding. Seriously. This is a community of unpaid volunteers, and being a crankypants at us is a really good way to kill our desire to help you with your problem. If the urge to whine or demand is striking, please find a way to rework what you want to say into something respectful and relationship-building. Be creative, offer ideas, listen to responses, and be cooperative — you’ll have much better results.

Right now, anyone can post an entry without moderation. If people start breaking these ground rules, then I will start moderating user accounts and posts. And that will make this a lot less fun, so please don’t do those yucky things. kthx.

So where should you start? Here are some of my ideas…

• If you have an idea about how the site could be cooler, post it to see what other people think of it (if you get a whole bunch of people to agree that it’s brilliant and important, we might find a way to make it happen).
• If you want to get up on a soapbox and pontificate on what The Writ means to you, post it and it may inspire others to contribute their own thoughts on the matter.
• If you have a question, ask it, and someone will answer it. And all the other people who were wondering about the same thing but didn’t have the self-confidence to ask it themselves will silently praise your existence.
• If you’ve seen another site that’s doing something that you think we should or shouldn’t also do, tell us about it!

Hmm… what else could we do with this blog? Maybe you should tell me.

Oh, and posting notes: People tend to read entries that are easy to scan. For maximum impact, use short paragraphs, bulleted lists, and the occasional bold highlights. ALSO: USING ALL CAPS MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE AN ASSHOLE AND WOULD BE CLASSIFIED AS “DEMANDING.” So don’t do that.

Am I forgetting anything?