About Crosstimbers Novel Workshop

by Max Griffin 🏳️‍🌈

Rated: E · Article · Writing · #2309727

About Crosstimbers Novel Workshop

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You must be an author with at least one active novel in progress.

If you are not an Affiliate of the "Crosstimbers Author Consortium" , you must agree to the "Crosstimbers Code of Conduct"

You must be at least 18

You must have at lealst one draft chapter to share with the membership

You must have done at least one in-depth review on Writing.Com to share with the membership

You must agree to respect the confidentiality of the works that you review

The "Crosstimbers Novel Workshop Application" asks that you provide a link to a chapter of your novel and to an in-depth reivew that you have given. The managers of the Workshop may share this information with current Workshop authors to help assist in deciding whether you would be a good fit for the Workshop as it's currently configured.

How will we decide what's a good fit?

Partly it's subjective. Has your first chapter hooked at least some of us enough that we'd like to read more? Would we like to get reviews like the one you submitted?

Partly it has to do with member commitments. Do the Workshop members who would like to read your novel have the time, or are they already fully committed to other projects?

Partly it has to do with other factors. We try to keep our Workshop membership small, ten or fewer authors, so that we can get to know each other. That means that we need new members to "fit" in terms of genre. If we've got six fantasy authors and only two SciFi authors, a fantasy novelist might not be approved while a SciFi one would.

While your work has to be of good quality to be approved, it's supposed to be first draft. It's far more likely the decision will turn on other things, like matching with preferences of current members or the current mix of genres in the Workshop. We actually like working with eager-to-learn, first-time novelists.

The only way to find out is to apply, which costs nothing.

We'll respond to your application fairly quickly, usually within a week. If it turns out you're not a good fit, tell yourself that it's the quirky tastes of authors, or just bad timing. You should never think it's because you're not good enough.

Confidentiality Expectations.

Members of the Workshop will under no circumstances share the following outside the Workshop

passkeys,
chapter or book links,
chapter or book contents,
plot out line or character arcs
or any other material related to another another author's copyrighted material

Why is this important?

Members seeking publication will want to sell first rights to their novel in various markets to a publisher. Most US publishers what to secure "first North American rights" and "first online rights." "First rights" means in particular that the work has not been previously published in those markets.

Authors own the copyright of things they post on Writing.Com--there's even a copyright notice placed at the bottom of each item. But if the item is posted in the clear--without a passkey or other restriction--then the author has used the "first right" to online publication and cannot sell it later. For this reason, our chapters all have passkeys on them.

For novels, most publishers will permit sharing up to 5000 words or so for marketing purposes. You will find some Workshop members have the first two or three chapters of their novels on Writing.Com for this purpose. Also, publishers encourage sharing early drafts of your work with a small, select group of beta readers. The Workshop constitutes such a group. In fact, it can help you find a publisher if your query mentions that your work have been vetted by a Writers Workshop.

In addition to passkeys, Writing.Com also lets members limit who can see their items by group membership, so some authors have both passkeys and share with the Crosstimbers Novel Workshop Group. Sharing with the Group avoids the necessity of sharing the passkey with the Group. However, if a member is in more than one workshop--there are several on Writing.Com--they can only share with one group at a time. In this case, they must use the passkey system for all the other Workshops they might be in. If a member reveals the passkey, it must not be shared outside the Workshop.

Likewise, Workshop ciritiques may not be shared outside the Workshop under any circumstances.

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