FAQ - The Arlington Writers Meetup Group
Who Are We?
We are a fun and supportive group of writers living in and around Northern Virginia. All skill levels and all types of writing are represented: novels, poetry, lyrics, short stories, non-fiction, essays, children's stories, and more! We are a writing group, not a reading club. If you want to read the 10 best (or worst) novels of all time, there are many reading clubs in the Washington area for you. See on the Meetup.com website.
The group meets every Wednesday at 7p.m.upstairs in the Barnes & Noble in Clarendon Commons.
We coordinate the group through the Meetup website at . Meeting notices, online discussion threads, and posting of works for the group to critique are managed through the site. You need to join the online group to see sections like messages and files.
Come by and check it out, or email us for more information. We don't bite.
Membership Contributions
Members voluntarily contribute $5 annually. The contributions first go to pay the yearly membership fee for the Meetup Site ($144/year). "Extra" funds will carry over to the next year's costs, be used to either throw a party for the group, or go to present awards. The group will decide. Once a new member joins online, he or she will have 2 months to try the group on for size before being asked to contribute. If after 2 months a member has not paid, he or she will be removed from the member list. Members who have not attended meetings or viewed the website for three months will be removed from the membership list.
Meetings
We meet every Wednesday at 7 p.m. upstairs in the Barnes & Noble in Clarendon Commons, Arlington, Virginia. Meetings generally last about 2 hours. We swap two kinds of weekly meetings. At “Primary Meetings” we critique work posted to the website by members. “Secondary Meetings” are workshops that may discuss a writerly topic such as “Dialog” or “Subplots,” a "free writing" session with prompts, or a “Fanning Fragmentsinto Flames” session. In the later, members bring in ideas, partial stories, or characters they want help developing in a brainstorming session.
Members should critique pieces only after having read the entire piece. Our critiques are low-key and supportive.
The group coordinates meetings through the Meetup website at .
Posting
If you want to submit something for the group to critique at a meeting, please post it to the Files section the Friday before the meeting.
When you post stories on the website, please supply context for the work. It helps the reviewer get into the right mindset to read it. Either at the top of the piece itself or in the description box when you post the file, add just a little something: "This is the opening chapter from a novel," or "This is a children's story," or "This is a short work I did to find out if I could put a full story into words without using 'e'."
Please spell check and proofread your document before submitting it. You are asking ten or more people to dedicate personal time to reading your piece. Please take your time to clean up the spelling and grammar issues.
We post through the website .
You can limit access to your posting to members of the group only.
Location
Barnes & Noble Booksellers
Clarendon Market Commons
2800 Clarendon Blvd.
Arlington, VA22201
703-248-8244
Parking
There is a parking lot on site. You can have your ticket stamped by the Barnes and Nobles sales desk and parking will only cost a dollar.
Metro
The Clarendon Market Commons is near the Clarendon Station on the Orange line. As you leave the station escalators, Clarendon Blvd. is on your right. Follow it down hill to the Commons, which is on the right.
Food
There are restaurants near the metro and in the Commons. Barnes and Nobles has a café with ready-made sandwiches, pastries, and such. We sometimes go out after meetings to continue socializing.
ClarendonMarketCommons, 2800 Clarendon Blvd., Arlington, VA22201