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Writing Resources - Rules - Why Register?
free online writing workshop
Welcome!
The Slush Pile is a free, open-forum, short story writing workshop. Here you can display your fiction or non-fiction writing to be read, commented on or critiqued by others just like you. What is an open-forum? Well, it means that anyone can read the stories and posts. The attraction of this is that anyone can join and contribute. Most writing workshop sites are closed to the general public and you must request admission. Those sites have a good reason for being closed. Many publishers consider anything on the internet as being 'published' and therefore not acceptable. So why is The Slush Pile an open-forum, then? Simply put, because closed forums tend to go stagnant and have few active members. I would not be half as interested/good/prolific if it wasn't for an open-forum site I ran into a couple years. That site (www.eastoftheweb.com/uncut) has since closed down and I have felt the lack ever since. So, in an effort to create that same creative atmosphere, I bring you "The Slush Pile". I have made an effort to protect your stories, however, hoping to keep them viable for publication. I have limited search-bots from reading the forum layer of the stories section. If you submit a story and the publisher Googles it to see if it has been 'published' on the internet, your story will not be searchable. This is, of course, an imperfect protection, so there are no guarantees. Guests, or non-registered users, can read your stories, however.
The term "slush pile" in the publication world means unsolicited story submissions. To them it means a never-ending supply of stories of questionable content and quality. Often the term is not a complimentary one. To me and my new site, however, it means a never-ending supply of would-be authors to learn from each other by sharing experiences, resources and giving feedback on short stories and poems. Instead of blindly sending out your stories in the hopes of getting lucky, you can use The Slush Pile as a stepping stone to educate yourself and increase your experience and resources. The hope is to create a community of ever-changing members that will share their knowledge and experience with other potential writers.
The goal of this site is to give those beginner writers, who would otherwise go unnoticed and without much help, a free place for them to display their work and get feedback on how to improve it. Hopefully we can grow a new batch of writers who just needed that extra stepping stone to get published. So, fancy yourself a writer but know that you don't yet have the knowledge and skills to get published? Sign on up and learn by sharing your work, discussing the craft of writing, and reading and critiquing other writers just like you! Who knows, but maybe one day you'll make it out of The Slush Pile and into a paying career.
Please be sure to read the FAQ, Rules and other announcements.
free online writing workshop
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free online writing workshop
