YA Critique Group Anyone?

Well hello fellow YAwesome writers!

I'm part of an a-mazing on-line writers group, The Write-Brained Network, or the WB for short. And within that group, I head up the Young Adult writers subgroup, YAwesome Writers. 

So far the YA group is kicking butt and taking names (there are 31 members so far!), but I've done very little over the past few months, in regards to setting up activities for everyone. 

With that being said, and based on how popular our group is, not to mention that of the YA genre (and not just for all of us that write it, but read it as well) I'd love to open the door to all of my fellow YAwesome writers, and see if anyone out there would be interested in forming a critique group?

I know many of you are already a part of other critique groups / beta readers, so who knows what kind of response I'll receive? But...I'd love to see if there is any interest!

Here's what we could do:

1. Based on the number of people that are interested, we could do one of two things:

  A. If the group is small, keep it to just that group (i/e 2-5 peeps?).

  B. If several peeps are interested, we could look into breaking out groups by sub-genre: Fantasy / SF, Contemporary, Action / Adventure, etc.

2. Once the group(s) are formed, decide on the perimeter of what we'd like to submit to the group for reading: Opening 250 words? First 5 pages? First chapter? 

IMHO, the first 250 words can be a little short - and the first chapter? Yeah, that can be a little long...so I'd recommend the first 5 pages, but of course this would be open for group discussion. Maybe we start w/the 250 word submit as an ice-breaker, and go from there?

3. Format for submitting pages for critique, review, reading:

My recommendation would be to use Google Docs. I absolutely love, love, love this format for critique partner submits - and for those of you that have never used it before, it's very easy! Upload your pages, add the emails of those that will be critiquing, hit send (kinda like lather, rinse, repeat!). Inside the document, you can make line edits, comments - and if others are on at the same time, you can even IM. Super simple. Great format.

4. Who's eligible?

  A. All current YAwesome members (and any new ones who join!). If you're interested, just sign up for the WB (it's free!) and join the YAwesome Writers subgroup.

  B. All writers open to solid and honest feedback, while staying courteous to all members. We're all trying to learn here, so there's no need for insincere or nasty feedback. Keep it real, not rude.

  C. All writers and readers of everything YA. I know there may be other genre-lovers out there, but receiving feedback from fellow YA writers / readers is invaluable to me. These great peeps know the market in which we're all writing. They understand the lingo, so to say. I'm not saying you can't cross pollinate into other genres, but YA should be pretty high on your list and is the foundation for this critique group.

  D. Open to any experience level - after all, you can only get better if you try - and we could all learn from those that have been around the block a time or two!

  E. I would like to keep this open to those that have completed manuscripts - but let's chat about your situation, and see if we can make it work! 

  F. Manageable: Small but thorough groups will allow for everyone to get their pages read and critiqued - as I mentioned above, if the response is great, we can see how many groups need to be formed.

  G. Anyone who can commit to reading +/- 5 pages per week. 

If you're interested, and have signed up to the WB / YAwesome Writers, just respond to the discussion thread on the WB / YAwesome subgroup page and let me know the following:

Name

YA Sub-Genre

MS Word Count

Based on the number of responses above, we'll see where we go from there!

Looking forward to working with such a talented group of folks - hope you feel the same!