There are three principal ways of posting your work on this site: works, works in progress, and notes. Depending on how satisfied you are with its current edit, you will want your work to be maximally visible, partially visible, or inaccessible to anyone but you. The modules work, work in progress and notes correspond to these levels of visibility, so be careful which module you post in. No-one might see your latest finished text, or everyone will be able to see that first draft you weren’t quite ready to share yet.

Works

Under the “Create content” menu, you will be offered the option of posting texts as a “Work”; this will allow you to post stories, chapters, sections or poems that are quite finished. Unfinished sections (stories, chapters etc.) or even a single scene or a starting or ending paragraph that turned out so well also go here — you’ll always have the option of editing the text in question.

The texts you’ve posted as works will show up in your personal portfolio (showcase): you include those texts that you think showcase your abilities. It is this portfolio that people will base their opinion about your writing on. That means that they will be readily visible to anyone visiting this site. Works are not limited to texts in their definitive form: they are what you select as illustrations of what you can do.

Once we start publishing Ezines with collections of texts posted here, their content will be selected from the works.

Works in progress (wips)

The Create content menu will allow you to post texts as wips. Wips are those texts you want to post, but are not completely happy with. Loose scenes, brief situation sketches, a description of your protagonists, stretches of dialogues, beginnings, endings, … Just anything that has an unfinished quality to it goes here.

Posting a text as a wip means that you do not want it to show up in your portfolio, because it does not show you at your best. Members and visitors to the site will still be able to read it, but they’ll have to look for it in the list with all of your texts, or using the view wips option in the menu. The reason that even unfinished texts are visible to others is that discussing the texts in the community is one of the central notions behind literalminded.com.

If you’re particularly proud of one particular dialogue, or if you know you’re not going to elaborate that scene into a fully-fledged novel, you might want to decide to move it to your portfolio by posting it as a work. Even unfinished fragments of texts tell something about you or your qualities as a writer.

Your notepad

On your personal workspace (which lists your works, wips, blog entries, news stories and links you added) you’ll find a tab “Notepad”. Note that you have to be logged in to be able to view your workspace: this is what makes sure only you have access to it. A notepad will hold text for you and only you until you decide to use it or move it elsewhere.

If you are one of those who write directly at the computer, a notepad tied to the writing site might come in useful. You can use it to type out full draft versions, or for a few great lines from the dialogue you’re working on, a start to that tricky section, a note to self, or just some ideas tat strike you while you’re on the board without a pen in sight. Because it will typically be used for shortish texts or a small-scale development of your ideas, you can only create 10 pages of notes. The rationale behind it is that if you’re seriously working on something, you will use more advanced equipment.