My Rockville Writers Group is in the process of putting together our very own anthology. This is a project that I have had in mind for the group for quite sometime. I had the idea, and everyone thought it was a great idea. After everyone agreed, we also agreed to submit a short story at the next meeting. No one ever submitted anything. We did that three times, at least. The first time, I had something, but I never said I did. I learned that people have to be ready for steps in life and the group was just not ready. But now, we are. Or at least we think we are. Everyone submitted something for the anthology this time. I have to admit that one member really pushed for it this time, which started the ball rolling.
We started by selecting a theme:
“An unexpected package arrives at your doorstep.”
I am absolutely amazed that the seven of us came up with seven very different stories. Something that I didn’t think would happen. None of the stories are alike in any way. They are all very creative very captivating and overall extremely good.
The process we used was first, we each had to think of something to write about. We discussed an estimated cost (mostly from experience) and decided that we each could handle what it would cost to print the anthology. We realized that since it was an estimated amount that the actual cost could be greater. No one was deterred. Since there are seven of us, three of us had to submit our first draft for a group critique and the following month, the other four had to submit their first draft. Then we submitted our work a second time, still three one month and four the following month. After we all submitted, we then hired an editor to do development, line and copy editing on each story. When we all receive our stories back, (this hasn’t happened yet because I just sent the stories off to her) we will have about a week to send the story back a second time. We plan to self-publish and one member will ask his cover designer to work with us on the cover for the book. We want something that represents the theme. We would like to have our anthology ready by September in time for the Baltimore Book Festival. At this point that may not be likely. Even if we don’t have it ready by that time, we will have put together our first group anthology. This leaves the way for more to come. I would also like us to host a conference, but first thing’s first.
Love a Good Story 