Crowdsourcing for Advice!
Though they don’t always realize it, writers crowdsource.
Workshops are a good example of literary crowdsourcing. Writers pay the big bucks, read a dozen or so peer stories, write critiques for those stories, then sit back and let the group provide feedback on the work they’ve submitted. The workshop attendee earns this, after hours of reading and analyzing the writing of others. Resumes and bragging rights steadily improve as names of authors the attendees have studied under are added to the list.
“George Saunders? Really? You’ve studied under him? You don’t say! And Erika Krouse? Get outta here!”
So today I’m asking for readers. I’m crowdsourcing you! Sometimes I’ll need the mot juste: just the right word. Other times, I’ll ask if an image I’ve written is clear, a sentence makes sense, a bit of magical realism has gone a tad too far. I promise to keep requests brief.
I don’t do this without offering my own analytical reading skills at the level of the advice I’m seeking. Sorry, no full manuscripts. :-)
I’m depending on the pyramid effect (I think that’s what it’s called), where I tell two people and they tell two people and they tell two people . . . you get it. This is an experiment. Let’s see what happens! Please recommend this so I can start building a community. The title of each post will begin with “Help!”
Thanks!
