Scrawl: The Writer's Asylum

Dear Visitor:

Welcome to Scrawl: The Writer's Asylum. This is a password-protected, members-only website. Please read about the site in the columns below. If you're a writer who would like to join us, click on New Member Sign-Up.

Members Only

Looking for information about writing and publishing? Check out Writer & Market, our literary search engine.

Having trouble logging in to Scrawl? Read the list of helpful tips we've compiled to help you.

Let's talk about writing

If you've never participated in Internet discussion boards before, you're in for some fun and a real sense of community. Here's the list of forums on our boards and a description of each:

Meeting Rooms

The Asylum
For general discussion of "serious" topics. Eros and thanatos. Or at least thanatos.

Rec Room
Lighter discussion topics, "LOL" email forwards, TV shows, recipes, etcetera.

Welcome to SCRAWL
New arrivals must post here to introduce themselves and request access to the other fora.

The Help Desk
Got a question or a problem with the site? Post it here.

The Workshops

Short Story Workshop
Writers of short fiction (from micro to macro length) can post it here for review by other members.

Poetry Workshop
..... If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. --Emily Dickinson

Novel Chapter Workshop
Working on a novel? You can post chapters here.

Non-Fiction Workshop
Essays. Editorials. Magazine articles & sidebars. Creative nonfiction. Looking for a place to hone your work? Try here.

Portrait Prose
A special forum for short vignettes which paint a picture in words, primarily using description, with no plot or standard story structure imposed.

Writing Challenges
A place to throw down the creative gauntlet, or pick one up. Members (like you!) set challenge parameters and deadlines.

Sessions @ Scrawl
Workshops held by volunteer Session leaders, in which members take part in focused discussions and do related writing exercises.

Screenplay Workshop
Post your screenplays here. Then, you know, talk about them.

Flashing and Freewriting

Flash & Chat
One-hour wonders every Saturday night at 9:30 p.m. and every Wednesday at 1:30 p.m. (Both times zoned in eastern U.S.)

Freewrite
A place to vent, scribble, and muse aloud.

Writing/Marketing Discussions

Writing, Literature and Craft
For discussion of writing technique, books and related topics.

Markets & Marketing
Got a question or advice about selling your writing? Post here.

Books
A place for book groups and co-reading discussions

Sub Club
Special forum for our mass submissions club.

Success Stories!
Getting published somewhere? Tell us about it!

Speculative Fiction Discussion
Sci-Fi, fantasy and weirdness.

The Sub Club: It's not about sandwiches

How many stories do you have sitting in a drawer? Or on your hard drive?

Editors all over the world are ignoring them, you know. Why aren't they
sitting in a slush pile being ignored by an editor from a closer distance?

Enough already. You need to join the Scrawl Sub Club.

Spell check it, print it and ship it, Danno. And not to just any old Podunk Review, no sir. We send them to the biggies: New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Glimmertrain, Iowa Review, Zoetrope All-Story, Harper's, McSweeney's, Esquire, and the list goes on. Twenty in all.

Twenty fresh printouts of our wonderful stories; twenty large envelopes; twenty SASE's; twenty yucky stamps to lick. And the fantastic feeling of accomplishment and hope when you haul the stack of envelopes to the Post Office and drop them into the Out-of-Town slot, one at a time for effect, wanting to shout to the crowd there assembled: "Here is my ticket to the big time, people. Next up, the Pulitzer."

Sure the odds are long. Sure we expect to be rejected. Sure our mailboxes will be brimming with our own SASE's (okay, not brimming, they don't come back that fast). It's not that we're pinning our hopes on acceptance (but acceptance would be totally cool). The point is to DO SOMETHING. And doing things in groups is often easier than doing them alone.

Who We Are

"Scrawl: The Writer's Asylum" is a community of writers dedicated to improving our craft.

With this goal in mind, the site offers workshops for all types of writing, information and support on publishing your work, and general camaraderie and discussion.

The site endorses free speech and encourages individual expression and growth. Membership is open to writers who want to participate in a supportive community.

How to register

Members must register to join this site. Registration helps protect our unpublished work and maintain our community. To register, click the "New Member Sign-Up" button to the left.

Everyone's a critic
The heart and soul of Scrawl are the workshop forums where members' stories and poems are peer-reviewed by other members. The critiquing process cuts two ways: Your comments can be invaluable to the writer, but they also reflect on you and your contribution to the site.
To learn more about the reviewing process at Scrawl, click here .

Want to hone your writing skills? Try "Flash & Chat"

Have you ever tried to write a complete story in one hour? Members of SCRAWL do it every week in "Flash and Chat." The fun takes place every Saturday night, beginning at 9:30 p.m. EST (US).

The exercises comprise three parts: flash, critique, and an optional chat session.

For each session, a volunteer will post a topic in the Flash Fiction forum. The topic may be a word, or a concept, or a quote, or something else entirely. Participants have one hour to write a piece of short fiction, usually working from this starter topic (although that's optional). This short fiction, or "flash" should be posted in the flash forum at the end of the hour (by 10:30).

In the next hour, participants will read and comment on the work of the rest of that evening's group. Comments should be honest and constructive, with the understanding that the work was completed in an hour.

In the third hour, participants gather in the SCRAWL chat room to talk about the session or any other topic that comes up. Joining in chat is optional, but it's a good way to get to know other ScrawlFolk.

If you'd like more info, including our regular "Flash & Chat" schedule, click here.

Visit The Story Garden, our literary ezine

Members of Scrawl periodically publish an online ezine called The Story Garden, which represents the best work produced on Scrawl in the most recent period.

The Story Garden gives members the opportunity to experience the submission process, to have work showcased in a high-quality venue, and to gain experience serving as guest editors.

The 'zine is produced by an Editorial Board that consists of volunteers from among the membership. The Editorial Board will vote among themselves to elect a Managing Editor. Other people may be brought in for production assistance.

To see the current and archived issues, click here .

The Story Garden Editorial Policy

The only stories, poems, flash fiction or other works eligible for inclusion are those written by a member of Scrawl: The Writer's Asylum. Rather than repeat those categories, all such work henceforth will simply be called "submissions."

A submission must have been workshopped in the forums and then re-worked accordingly by the author. "Accordingly" does not mean that the author needs to have changed a word…just considered the content of the critiques.

The Editors may ask an author to make further changes to a submission in a sort of final critiquing process. The author will be under no obligation to make the suggested changes, but may find the submission rejected as a result.

To be considered for inclusion in the ezine, work must be submitted by the author. However, the Board may, via private email, request that an author submit a particular piece.

The Editorial Board for any given issue will be the sole decision makers about what submissions go in that issue and how many submissions will be published.

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