“An online writers workshop aims to expose the guts of works in
progress to the Internet’s hive mind.”
“The open-source movement isn’t just for hackers. Hacks are
having a go at it too, says Andrew Burt, a writer of both code and
prose who has contributed to the BSD kernel, Perl and Linux and who
founded the online writing workshop Critters. He encourages writers
to expose the guts of their stories, just as Linus Torvalds does
his code, and invite critique and contribution.”
“The premise is simple: You submit a story or novel, via Web
browser or e-mail, to a password-protected area of the Critters
site. When your story comes up for review, you receive around 20
critiques. In exchange, you are obligated to evaluate the stories
of other group members at least three times a month. It’s a lot
like many a writers’ group, except that it harnesses the Internet’s
hive mind rather than a small group of geographically related
people.”