Politicians, Writers, and Critique Groups

My dear friend Robin Weeks had a great post yesterday, that got me waxing a little whimsical. You should check out her post before reading on.

Since I work with politicians, am the election official in charge of a primary for over 50,000 registered voters three weeks from yesterday, I must add the following to Robin's theme:

If you want to be a politician, you need to try and please everyone (to get their votes) with the end result that you tick off a lot of people.

If you want to be a writer, you must try to please everyone (because you can't submit anything without feedback so you've got beta readers, critique partners, friends, neighbors, people in line with you at the grocery store, etc. giving you input) with the end result that your ms could wind up without the power and emotion to move anyone (and you are now bald from having ripped all your hair out from trying to conform to what everyone else wants your tale to be).

Hmmm ... seems like everyone needs to accept that if you can't please everyone, you should at least please yourself.

And keep your hair.

But seriously, I've received some good feedback from my betas and tremendous input from my online critique partners. Really. These people are incredible.

Remember that stupid $770 college class I worked so hard to get into last fall because it was a prerequisite for the creative writing class I wanted? But then I got into the class and realized that no way was it going to teach me what I wanted to learn, so I dropped it?

But then I found out about my online critique group (through Robin, btw) at David Farland's Writers' Groups. So I submitted my name to a couple of groups and was accepted by both of them? And now the members (one group is very small and not overly active, which is saving my neck--while the other one is very active and keeping me busy) are teaching me just the stuff I wanted to learn?

For free!

Well, last Saturday, I attended the first meeting of a new in-person critique group.

You know. The kind with real, live people actually sitting in the same room together.

It was a heady experience. They were all at the professional critique session I attended a week ago Saturday, and two of them were in my group. This should be interesting. I've gotten so used to the online format, there will be an adjustment to this live thing.

Do you belong to a live critique group? How does yours work? How often do you meet?

If you don't belong to a live group, do you have on online one? Are you happy with it? How'd you find out about it?

Critique Groups

I'm sure all you writers out there have heard of and/or participated in a critique group. I've heard some tales of some wonderful groups, but I've also heard some real horror stories. When I was at Life, the Universe and Everything conference (LTUE) in February a couple of New York Times list authors mentioned how destructive they'd found them to be and no longer participated in them.

Late last year, I posted on Brodi Ashton's blog asking about how her critique group had found each other (her group is one of the wonderful ones that meets in person). Well, Robin Weeks who also follows Brodi kindly let me know about her online critique group at David Farland's Writers Forum. Dave is a wonderful supporter of writers as well as a well-known author in his own right. He teaches classes on writing, and I think he's been at all three conferences I've attended in the last nine months. Members of his Writers Forum who were attending LTUE were able to get together at a local restaurant for dinner. It was lots of fun, and I got to meet in person several people I'd conversed with online.

Anyway, when I joined Dave's writer's groups I found there are a number of individual groups based upon genre. I applied to join two of them. One was for the romance genre, since my finished ms is a romantic suspense. This group is not very active right now, but the two ladies there are very supportive.

I also applied to Robin's group for YA fantasy. This is a very active group, and I've learned so much already. As I detailed last fall, I signed up for a college creative writing class ($770 in tuition for 3 credits) hoping to learn more about the craft of writing. I knew within a week this class wasn't what I was looking for and dropped it. I learned more in a month with the Pied Pipers critique group than that class would have taught me.

Critiques can be frustrating. There's no getting around it. But they have to be honest, or they're a waste of time and effort on both sides. The frustration isn't always about how people are critiquing your writing. It's also about figuring out how to make something work in your book. I can have a number of my friends (who aren't writers) be beta readers for me. They can give me input on how the story is working, but they can't necessarily tell me WHY it isn't working. My fellow critique group members can. And their input has been very insightful.

But critiques need to be about what works as well as what doesn't. Sometimes it's too easy to get caught up with finding the errors. As with our children, we need to catch the writer doing it right.

Now, as the writer, I must realize that I can't please everyone, even in my critique group. But I should seriously consider what I'm being told and decide how best to use the input to improve my book--or not. A funny thing happened with my first submission. None of my beta readers had ever had any doubt about the gender of my MC. Yet two of the critiquers in my group got the impression she was a guy and that totally changed how they looked at everything. Considering the number of people who have read the beginning of my book, that's a good 10% of the people who could potentially think my MC was a gay guy. It was an easy fix for me to make, but one I wouldn't have considered without their input.To me, that's priceless.

The things I'm learning from this critique group doesn't t just come from critiques on my writing but on the critiques I read on other members of the groups. I'm learning what I should be looking for, how to be a better critiquer myself. I'm still really new and raw at it.

I know a very talented woman, who's written two books. I've read comments she's made in an online forum, and she's intelligent and writes very well. I imagine that her books are really good. But I'll never get the chance to know because she won't let anyone read them. Anyone.

When my oldest daughter decided to run for student body president in the 6th grade, she made a comment to me that was very profound and wise beyond her years. It's something I wish someone had told me when I was in younger. She said she could never win if she didn't try.

Well, she did try, and she did win. Did I ever mention she's my hero?

How about you? Do you have a critique group? Do you meet in person or online? What's your experience been?

Letting Go

I've learned so much about writing over the past year and even since the beginning of 2011 after joining a couple of critique groups and attending two conferences. I've been trying to consider the comments made in the critiques and as a result I decided to take one suggestion (made by two different readers) and rewrite my ms to follow a slightly different plot line and see how it goes. I finished Part 1 (there are 3 parts) this weekend.

This happens to be WIP #1 for me (I have two others partially done). I hear a lot about how your first book is always a piece of trash and you should just write it and get it out of your system and move on. As a stupid newbie, I'm not sure I agree. Here's what I'm thinking.

1. I love the story. Even if it's never good enough to publish, I will get it formatted and have it printed so I have a copy of it. Because of this I want it to be the very best little story it can be.

2. This manuscript is the one I'm practicing on. It's completely finished, and the plot is solid (as others have confirmed for me). I look at this book kind of like I did when I taught myself how to read crochet instructions. My grandmother had taught me how to do a simple granny stitch, and I'd made several afghans over the years. But I didn't know how to read a pattern. I purchased a book, a thing of crochet string, and a hook of the correct size. I went to work and when I'd finish a certain technique, I'd unravel what I'd done and start on the next project. I did this until I could read just about any pattern. The string had been used to many times it had become discolored and I threw it away. But the experience was incredibly useful.

I'm on edit/rewrite 9 of my ms because I keep learning new techniques and writing pitfalls to watch out for. I don't feel like I'm wasting my time, and from the feedback I've received it's getting better (so hopefully I haven't taken the heart out of it by all my editing).

3. Once I'm finished with this one, I will (I hope) be better trained as I approach completing those other works.

I'm very much the personality type to start something and finish it. I love being able to say I completed a task--and this task I love. I hope I'm not like the old Harry/Hermione shippers--delusional--and hanging on when I should just set this project aside and let go.

What about you? Do you ever wonder if you've hung on too long? How do you decide it's okay to keep going or cut the apron strings?

Social Media

Today's post was inspired by a discussion going on in my writing group at Dave Farland's Writing Groups. One of our members, Justin Jeppesen, who is new to the Twitter thing (me, too) asked for some suggestions. I'm going to share Robin Week's response because it's so good:

For Twitter:

• Participate in the hashtag chats, like #yalitchat and #askagent (when you see one going, click on the hastag and it will take you to a screen where you can see what everyone else is tweeting with that hashtag)--everyone there will see your tweets and you'll pick up followers that way.
• Comment on others' posts, start up conversations, etc--don't just tweet about your books: be interesting
• Follow the people you'd like to have follow you--an email is sent to everyone you follow (well, depending on their settings) and a lot of people will auto-follow or will at least check you out for a possible follow if you follow them first
• DON'T connect Twitter to Facebook--it is annoying to those who follow you in both places. Use Twitter for little things and Facebook for larger things and, for huge things, post separately on both.

For the Blog:

• Have a regular schedule of posting, so your followers can anticipate your posts (I've just started posting Tuesday night and Saturday morning--if I can keep it up for a few weeks, I'll post my schedule on my blog), too.
• Interesting titles, to entice followers and others to read your posts
• Participate in blogfests--those are when you register your list your blog on the host's blog with the other participants and then do something specific with your own blog--there's an April A-Z blogfest going on in April, if you're interested: posting every day but Sundays in April--then everyone is encouraged to visit the other blogs in the fest
• Tweet about your new blog entries (this is where your interesting titles come in) with a bit.ly link to the blog post

In General:

• Social media is SOCIAL--you need to get out there, comment on others' blogs, comment on tweets, etc. Elana Johnson (who has almost 2000 blog followers) went through a period where she commented on 50 blogs a day!!
• Don't diss others--everyone can see your tiff and no one thinks you're cool when you're whining

And as Robin also suggests, you can check out Beth Revis' post on this topic here.




How comfortable are you with social media? Do you find it difficult to balance all the other aspects of your life--like writing--with the time it takes to Twitter, Facebook, Blog, etc.? How are you making it work for you?