Meeting Rules
General Rules for All Meetings
The submission deadline for any given meetings is 23:59 on the Saturday before. Submission guidelines are laid out here.
On the Sunday before a meeting, eligible submissions will be sent to the mailing list to allow time for attendees to read all the pieces.*
At the meeting, each piece is discussed one at a time. Authors are asked to remain silent while attendees are given a chance to share their feedback, after which the authors can respond, ask questions for clarity, and discuss some of the points before we move on to the next piece.
The meeting host will moderate the discussion, and make sure everyone who wants to gets a chance to speak. Feedback doesn’t have to be positive, but it does have to be useful to the authors, and the host will stop any feedback that is disparaging or destructive without purpose. We’re here to help each other and encourage writing.
There is no cap on attendance, either online or in-person, but we won’t let meetings go on all night. If feedback is taking too long, the Host may step in to cut someone off or ask them to summarise their points (don’t worry, this hasn’t been necessary in a while).
For the sake of efficiency, feedback concerning issues like typos, punctuation, formatting, and other such errors should be written down and sent to the GWG e-mail address so we can pass it on to the author. We don’t want to spend all meeting documenting every missing apostrophe 😉 (though we do ask authors to try their best to minimise such mistakes before submission, sometimes there’s still a lot of typos and that is okay).
After all pieces are discussed, we have informal group chat about anything we feel like, be it writing, publishing, the weather, sports, or anything else.
*(This process is sometimes delayed and the e-mail doesn’t go out until Monday, but if you haven’t heard anything from us by Monday night, consider reaching out to us in case you didn’t receive the e-mail.)
Online Meetings
Online meetings don’t require any account and can be joined via a web browser or the Jitsi mobile app.
Meetings will require a password that will only be shared, along with the link to join, with the mailing list, and not posted publicly. All you need to do is click the link in the e-mail, check the box saying you agree to the Terms & Conditions, put in the password and you’re in!
The meeting link is always sent a little while before the meeting start, if you want to test out your device and make sure it connects you have time to do that.
The Host will mute participants during the formal feedback session so that it’s easier to get through everyone’s responses respectfully, but everyone will be unmuted again for the informal post-meeting banter.
Though you are always welcome to turn off your own mic and camera if you want the privacy.
In-Person Meetings
Our default venue is the Avant Garde, a bar in central Glasgow. You are not required to purchase anything to attend, but it would help curry favour with the staff if you did (but seriously: not a requirement).
If you can’t hear someone giving feedback, don’t hesitate to ask them to be louder (especially if you’re the author).
And don’t hesitate to let the organisers know of any issues with the venue. We’ve changed venues before and are open to changing venues again, never fear to tell us if there’s something you’re not fond of and we’ll do our best to work it out.