Manuscript Development & Critique

Here is your opportunity to polish up to 5,000 words for critique and to improve your writing through the skill-developing process of critiquing draft manuscripts. The above quote from Sarah Selecky really says it all. Not only is it helpful to receive feedback about your own work, but it is a crucial muscle we all need to exercise to deeply work on another writer's draft.

Our group will be limited to 7 writers.  We will write to prompts in the workshop to keep generating new work, but the majority of our time together will be focusing on manuscript critiques. We will review 3 manuscripts each session, and writers will be able to submit 2 manuscripts during the course of our workshop. While participants are expected to read all the manuscripts, you will be responsible for written critiques on no more than 4 manuscripts. Writers will receive a written critique from Jennifer on each of their manuscript submissions.

Teacher and author Sarah Selecky says of critique workshops:

"It’s great to get ... different opinions on your own story, of course, but the real learning comes from reading another person’s ... draft and finding ways to articulate what’s working about it, and what needs work. You have so much more perspective on the flaws and strengths in other people’s work than you can possibly have on your own. I think too often that students get excited about submitting their own work for critique and hearing what people think of it. Sure this is exciting (we all like to hear other people pay attention to our work), but they are overlooking the real learning opportunity in the workshop, which is learning elements of the craft by helping other people understand elements of the craft."Write your text by editing it directly on this page.