Erotica Harem

Hi all. Here are a few thoughts, in no particular order:

1) More mods are welcome, but we don't need more. Lack of mods is not the problem here.

2) The problem is lack of variety in writers/reviewers. The first online writing group I joined, about 15-20 years, had around 20 or so members. A couple wrote hard erotica. A couple wrote children's fantasy. One wrote police procedurals (he has gone on to be published and has several novels on Amazon right now, including one that I reviewed!). Several of us wrote SciFi. Several wrote fantasy. A couple wrote Chick Lit (mushy romance). You get the idea. This eclectic mix was WONDERFUL. My SciFi was reviewed by writers of women's romance who had never read SciFi before, and they gave me great advice on character interactions. I had never read women's romance, but my reviews of their work helped them understand the need for cycles of rising and falling tension, even in romance. You get the idea. When we have so few active people in this group, we are limited to the same types of comments from the same few people. Don't get me wrong; the comments are good and helpful. But they leave many areas untouched. I think that one of the great mistakes of the Novel Workshop is splitting it into genre groups. I think we would all benefit by having us all together in one big group so we could benefit from the variety of reading and reviewing styles. Mainstream Manor comes close to that ideal.

3) One of my great pet peeves from day one has been the requirement of one review a week to stay on the board. A year or so ago, a kind soul read and reviewed my entire novel through in about two weeks, several dozen reviews. Then something came up in his life and he had to stop reviewing for a few weeks. He got kicked off the board!!! I'm in the same spot right now. My time is limited. I'm enjoying Max's Demeter Project. I'd love to read it straight through to the end in a few days of marathon reviews, and then take a break for a month or two. But because of this weekly rule, I'm having to parcel out my reviews one chapter per week. That benefits neither Max nor me.

4) All these complicated rules for determining who goes on which of four different states (reviewer's board, writer's board, red list, and off the board) make a lot of busywork for the mod. The first review group I was in was self policing. There was a mod (Diana Gabaldon) who kept an eye on things. But for the most part we knew who was being a good reviewer and who was not. If someone did not pull their weight with good reviews, we quit reviewing that person. If someone vanished for a long time we noticed. The mod had very little work to do and we got along just fine. I was an active member of that group for five years until the hosting site folded and we disbanded in dismay. The group had almost nothing in the way of formal rules, and we thrived. We're all adults.

Anyhow, those are my twenty cents worth. I invite comments.


Tim, AKA Sandy Samson

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