Last December we asked you which features you wanted us to add to our writing group. The majority voted for writing lessons and analysis. We recently added writing lessons. You can see the current writing lesson on your My Account page or you can view the writing lesson archive. We are currently adding one lesson per month so the archive will continue to grow.

What do you think about these writing lessons? Do you like or hate how we have done the lessons? Why?

Jacob

Right now we are working on version 2 of the private writing groups. Our changes will make it easier to interact with the different groups you belong to. We are planning on building the automated writing analysis after we revamp the private writing groups.

We are considering making two changes to the review framework and would like to know your thoughts before we decide whether or not to make these changes. You can see an example of a review framework below.

Change 1
Get rid of the star ratings. This would leave the comment boxes as the only feedback mechanism. I like the stars because they provide additional feedback. Others hate the stars because they seem so arbitrary. Do you think we should keep, remove, or make the star ratings optional? Is there something you think we should replace the star rating system with?

Change 2
Provide a “not applicable” checkbox to allow reviewers to skip a section of the critique framework. For example, if a story doesn’t have dialogue the reviewer would not be forced make up feedback for the dialog section. Should we continue to require everything to be filled out in the review framework or should we provide a way to skip sections?

Sample Review Framework

Thanks for your help,

Jacob

I don’t want to offend anyone, but as writers, I think we’re pretty great at making excuses. Maybe it’s because our creativity makes us better at it than non-writers. Just look at all the reasons we’ve invented not to write: lack of time, too busy, lack of motivation, fleeting muses, and, of course, the dreaded writer’s block.

While I’m sure not all writers make excuses, I’ve met enough to know that most do, me included. My pet excuse is I’m sick of sitting in front of my computer. My job requires me to sit at a computer all day. Then, on top of that, I usually try and put in a couple hours a day trying to get the word out on ”the internets” about Review Fuse. By the time I’m done, the last thing I feel like doing is staring at my computer screen trying to write… and so most days I don’t. However, when I force myself to overcome my excuses and write in spite of them, a funny thing happens, I get so into my stories that I spend hours typing away without realizing how much time has passed until my wife asks if I’m ever coming to bed.

I call this concept “Perspiration before Inspiration.” Despite what Heinz Ketchup or more recently Guinness Beer would have you think, the best things DO NOT come to those who wait (remember those commercials? the ketchup one is quite a bit older, but you should still recognize the actor). Good things come to those who work. Come to think of it, this even holds true with ketchup–after all, Heinz does sell a squeeze bottle now. Maybe that whole axiom was just made up by clever marketers trying to sell products that don’t provide the instant gratification that their competitors’ products did.

Of course, others have expressed this same concept far more eloquently than I. Here are some favorite quotes that get me going when I find myself wanting to make excuses:

“We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.”
- Frank Tibolt

“Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.”
- Pablo Picasso

“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”
- Jack London

“Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time… The wait is simply too long.”
- Leonard Bernstein

So what gets you going when you “just don’t feel like writing”? Have you found proven ways to motivate yourself or get new ideas flowing? If so, share your success in the comments.

One thing we’re working on at Review Fuse is putting together a system of writing prompts as well as writing exercises and assignments? When it’s done, will you use this feature? Share your thoughts and suggestions in the suggestion box.

- Clark

Chapters are flying all over Review Fuse. We originally intended to only have first chapters submitted for critique. However, members have been submitting chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5 for critique as well. As a result of book critique popularity we are looking for a better way to handle books.

The temporary solution is for you to find two or three authors on Review Fuse and critique each other’s books. We have set up the Get My Book Critiqued page to help authors find each other. This page also briefly explains how private groups can help with book critiques.

More importantly, we would like to develop a permanent solution for managing books critiques. How do you think we should facilitate the book critique process?

Jacob

In order to provide authors with timely critiques, a reviewer has 12 hours to complete a review once it is assigned. If the reviewer does not complete the review within this 12 hour limit we assign the work to someone else for review. Is this time period too long, too short, or just right?

We are thinking about changing the default review timeout to 5 hours and providing an option to extend the review timeout to 36 hours. What do you as an author and reviewer think of this idea?

Jacob

Update (March 16, 2009) - You now have 16 hours to finish an assigened critique.

The Review Fuse team is debating which feature to develop next. We would like your input about which of these features would help you benefit the most as a writer or from the peer critique process. Would you please rank the following 4 features in order of usefulness? Please feel free to add other features to your comments.

• Writing Lessons
  • We would provide a weekly writing lesson that focuses on specific writing skills. This would include topics like how to develop a captivating beginning for a story or how to create memorable characters. These writing lessons could be submitted for critique by your peers after completing the lesson.
• Verbal Review
  • This would allow a reviewer to read your piece out loud and interject their thoughts and comments vocally. This would only be available for users with microphones. We would let the author choose if they will accept verbal reviews. The verbal reviews would be available for download as MP3s.
• Create your own review frameworks
  • When you submit a piece for review you can develop your own review framework for the piece, allowing you to ask reviewers to address specific areas in your work.
• Writing analysis
  • Our servers would inspect your writing and programmatically identify issues like:
    • Is my writing too complicated?
    • Am I being repetitive?
    • Am I over-reliant on particular words and phrases?
    • How advanced and readable is my writing?

Thanks for your help. If you have not had a chance to do so please join our free writing community.

Jacob

We have asked published authors if they would be willing to write about their experiences as a writer and what led them into a writing career.  The response has been very overwhelming and we will shortly begin adding their posts to our blog.

If you are a published writer feel free to submit your url in the comments of this post and we may contact you asking you to be a guest blogger as well.

steve

Last week Steve announced our new public and private writing groups. We wrote about this exciting feature right before the Thanksgiving Holiday. A lot of our members did not have a chance to read about this powerful new feature so I wanted to quickly recap.

• Private Writing Groups
  • Invite your friends, family, colleagues, and current writing group members to join.
  • Receive critiques from those you trust.
  • Save time and gas by meeting online.
• Public Writing Groups
  • Focus on specific genres or topics.
  • Group creator can remove users who do not contribute to the group.
  • Improve your writing by getting help from your peers.

If you would like to try our public and private groups please join our writing community.

Jacob

We are pleased to announce the beta version of private writing groups. You can now create or join writing groups to share your work with a subset of the Review Fuse Community that is focused on a specific topic. You can also move your face-to-face writing groups online for those weeks you just can’t find the time to get together.  You can create groups that are publicly accessible or private groups that require an invitation and a password to join.  All groups also have the option for the moderator to approve all members who wish to join. You will be able to make sure the group remains true to what you need it to be.

We appreciate all the suggestions we received on how to implement the writing groups and welcome any additional feedback while using this new feature.   Our goal for these writing groups is to help you:

• Receive quality reviews from peers you trust
• Learn how to critique work by following our guided reviews
• Save time and Gas by moving your personal writing groups online
• Mostly importantly, to improve your writing with the feedback and help of your peers

Join Review Fuse to take advantage of our new writing groups and to help us improve services available to writers.

I am excited to announce a feature that a number of you have asked for. A summarized printable view of the reviews you have received, click on the image to see an example. We appreciate all of your suggestions for this feature that we did not think of on our own. Without your input we might not have created this feature which has proved so useful to Review Fuse authors. If you have not yet, signup to receive peer critiques like this one.

Private writing groups is getting really close to being released as well. There are a few tricky things to work out with it, but we are well on our way and excited for this too. I will let everyone know when it is released. Thank you all again for the suggestions on what we can improve. Please continue to let us know what you need, we will definitely do our best to get it for you.

Steve