Image courtesy martinaphotography on Flickr

Want to have a piece of your writing critiqued?

Send me an excerpt from your novel or short story, and the readers of Write It Sideways will give you feedback on your writing. I will be accepting only six excerpts per call, so writers will get their feedback in three months or less.

Excerpts will be chosen based on the following criteria:

• All submission guidelines must be followed. If your submission is missing ANY information, it will not be considered.
• The author must not have already had an excerpt critiqued on Write It Sideways (this may change in the future).
• I will try to select a variety of genres within any given submission period.
• I will choose excerpts that Write It Sideways readers can learn most from.

Your name may appear on your excerpt, or you might wish to remain anonymous. Some writers choose to remain anonymous until after feedback has be posted, then they identify themselves in the comment section.

Examples of critiques can be seen here:

• “My Johnny,” General Fiction
• “Morning After,” Horror
• “A Home on Rosy Mountain,” Short Story

How to Submit

Submissions open: Now

Submissions close: Friday, June 22, 2012 @ 9pm EST

• There are no restrictions on genre.
• Excerpts should be approximately 250 words long (but don’t stop in the middle of a sentence).
• Paste your excerpt into an email and send it to suzannah [at] writeitsideways [dot] com.
• Please make sure your paragraphs and dialogue are formatted the way you wish them to appear on the blog.
• Include the working title of your novel/short story, and the genre.
• Tell me whether or not this is the beginning of your story (either is fine, as long as I know).
• Tell me whether you wish to be identified by name (if so, provide your first and last name), or if you wish to be identified as an “anonymous aspiring author.”
• Please only send one excerpt during a submission period.
• Please be aware that posting an excerpt of your story online prior to submitting it to a writing contest may cause it to be disqualified from that contest.

Rules and Guidelines

1. Subscribe. Before you submit a piece of writing for critique, please make sure you’re subscribed to the blog (by either email or RSS), to ensure you don’t miss your excerpt being posted.
2. Respect. The purpose of this feature is to give encouragement and constructive criticism to aspiring writers. That means feedback should be given in a spirit of helping one other. Any rude or disparaging comments will be deleted.
3. Give back. Submit your writing only if you’re willing to give back by critiquing others’ work.

Notification

After the submission period closes, you will receive a form email letting you know whether or not your excerpt will be used. If you do not hear back within a few days of the end of the submission period, feel free to contact me.

Thank you!