Writing can be a lonely business. The internet makes it less so. But when an opportunity to join a new writers’ critique group came up for me last week, my kneejerk reaction was something dramatic along the lines of “No one can help me.” Then, I articulated it better by saying, “I don’t have anything that I’m open to feedback about at this time.”
Which made me want to know why that was my initial reaction.
Through college I was in a couple writing workshops. The fiction workshop I was in was about thirty people, so we were divided into four groups of eight or so. We read stories from a group every week on a four week rotation. Class time, which was three hours once a week, was for critiquing each others’ stories. And when I say ‘critique,’ what I mean is that you had to sit there quietly while your story was dragged for about twenty minutes or so. I was in the first group to submit and get critiqued and didn’t know how it worked, so I tried to ask questions and say what I was going for in an attempt to understand the critiques. I was told by the teacher that I was supposed to sit quietly and absorb.
I tried, but I don’t think I made a single edit to any of the stories that I’d turned in based on what my classmates said.
The following year, I was in a stage writing workshop which was much more collaborative. There were fewer of us, which helped make it feel like that. There was no structure to submitting except for a page limit so we didn’t end up talking about one piece for the entire class time; but if you wrote a scene, you could turn it in. I wrote a scene every week and saw it read by my classmates. That helped me to understand how they were interpreting the characters and story in real time. After they read the scene to me, we talked about what I was going for, where it landed and where it didn’t. I’d go home and make the edits to the scene, then write a new scene a few days later. I got much more out of that experience than I did the fiction writing workshop.
I think there are a few reasons for this.
First, like I said, there were fewer people in the class, which meant that discussions were easier to facilitate. There weren’t thirty people jostling for position to have their opinions heard. Second, the vibe was very different. Comparing the two environments, I felt that my fiction classmates weren’t as constructively critical; I won’t say that any of them were purposely harsh, but there seemed to be a subset of mostly grad students who seemed dismissive of me and the other undergrads. Third–and this is specific to me–I take criticism of my stories very hard, whereas I was less invested in my identity as a playwright, so I was more open to feedback.
So when the opportunity came up this week for me to join a writers’ critique group, I immediately shied away. I thought about submitting my most recent story Codename: Smile to the group, but I balked at that. I realized that I considered that story done and what I would have wanted out of submitting it to the critique group was fawning praise. I further realized that that may be why I took and continue to take criticism of my stories so hard: I put so much work into developing and writing them that, by the time I’m finished with them, I’m no longer open to feedback.
Everyone has opinions, but not every opinion is helpful. With too many cooks in the kitchen–or too many writers at the desk–the waters just get muddied. I don’t want to submit a story just to get praise and validation, but I also don’t want something that I consider to be done and good to be completely dragged. The trick for me is to figure out what point of my process I’m open to feedback and utilize beta readers at that point.
Being edited for publication is completely different for me. Many years ago, I was on a panel and got into a disagreement with a fellow panelist because I said that I’m pretty much open to almost any changes that a publisher wants to make to my story. My fellow panelist insinuated that I was less of a writer because of that, stopping short of calling me a sellout. You don’t have to change your story if you think the edits change your story into something that it’s not. But the publisher doesn’t have to publish your story if you’re not willing to work with them. That’s what makes being edited for publication different to me.
After going through this thought-process about critique groups and my experience with them, I decided to reach out and say that I didn’t have anything to submit this time around, but that I wanted to sit in and observe. The moderator said that was cool. So I’m going to go and check out the vibe and see if this group can give me what I’m looking for.
Now that I know what that is.
