Not everyone wants to get advice from a writer’s group, and
not every writer’s group works well for every writer. But if you do decide to
pass your work by some other writers, there are things you need to consider.
Writer’s groups come in all shapes and sizes. They have
various numbers of members, meet at different intervals, and critique any
number of pages. In some groups everyone submits a certain number of pages for
each meeting. In others one person submits a substantial chunk. I personally prefer
to submit a whole novel, or at least a big chunk because I want to know how a
novel is working overall for readers. But I know others who prefer to work in
20-page increments, revising one scene or chapter until they feel good about it
before they move on. It’s important when you decide you want to join a writer’s
group that you choose one that has a structure that supports the way you work.
It’s especially critical that you join a group whose members
respect each other. I’ve heard horror stories about group members who try to
rewrite people’s books, who give nasty critiques, who argue when people try to
provide honest critiques, and who don’t manage to read others’ work while
expecting other members to spend time on theirs. You have to be able to trust
that the members of the group have your interest in mind as well as their own, and
that they can give and take honest criticism. It’s just as crucial to get real,
honest feedback as it is not to get overly critical feedback. A reader should
give both positive and constructive comments. It does the writer no good to
only hear only bad news—it crushes the spirit and makes it hard to approach the
manuscript editing with enthusiasm. But it also does no good to only hear how
wonderful a piece of writing is. You don’t join a group just to get strokes.
I happen to belong to a group of four writers, and I’m the
only crime writer in the group. The reason it works for me is that the others
have respect for the kind of work I do, and even if they aren’t mystery
readers, they understand the genre and critique my work according to my
intention, not just for their reading preferences. I learn a lot not only from
their critiques, but also from what they write and from the critiques they get.
At one time I belonged to a group of all crime writers and I
really enjoyed reading their work and getting their feedback. Unfortunately the
group stopped being the best fit for me. When we formed the group, the process
was that we each submit an entire manuscript, which meant with six writers, one
writer’s turn only came around every six months. It worked fine when we were
all unpublished and did have not have deadlines, but once people started
writing under contract, it was impossible to wait several months for feedback.
That group still gets together on occasion to catch up with each other. It
didn’t disband because of bad feelings, but because it stopped meeting
everyone’s needs.
Because I have a June 1 deadline, I had my critique last
week. It was very satisfying because what I heard was that the book works well
overall and that it needed some editing. There were no surprises in terms of
what needed to be done, and I’m already ripping through it beefing up the parts
that weren’t up to par.
Next week I’ll talk about that “beefing up” process.
No comments:
Post a Comment