Review of recent survey of members

Thank you to all of our members who responded to our recent survey.  The committee really appreciates your feedback and as a result we are implementing many of your suggestions and resolving most of your concerns.

Firstly a big shout out to the 50% of you who have been members for four or more years, this shows how much you appreciate this organisation (your organisation). Sadly, none of you have ever served on the committee. Consider this your invitation. If you would like to know more about what we do just drop us a line and we will be happy to talk in detail, and if you feel you’d like to be more involved, we will be more than happy to co-opt you even before next year’s AGM.

For the past few years Spec Fic NZ have sponsored the SFFANZ annual conference writing competition, as well and running a few of our own. Though many of you have indicated you would like more writing competitions, we often had too few entries to make them viable. However, we realise that even if we don’t run them we should be more proactive about letting you know about other competitions, or publication opportunities, so we are planning to add this as a subsection on the website.

There was strong interest in publishing another collection of members’ writing but for that we need a dedicated (unpaid) facilitator and editor; please contact us if you are interested in taking on this project.

Two of the services that we do offer (on an ongoing basis) are book reviews and manuscript assessments. In order to make it easier for members to access these services this will also be made clearer on the website.

The most frequently articulated request was for meeting other writers. Due to the spread of our members, this is tricky but has worked well in some areas (Waikato and Wellington).  If you would like to start a critique group in your area please let us know, otherwise, you will have recently been sent an invitation to join a bi-monthly virtual group on slack where you can chat with other members and share work for critiquing. This will also be a place where you could meet other members and set up in-person meets in your neighbourhood.

Please check that you are receiving our monthly newsletter via email (though sometimes there is more than one a month) and let us know if you are not as there may be a technical issue.

Thank you so much for responding and we hope to get to know more of you better soon.

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