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| OK, my writers' group doesn't look exactly like this... Dance of Apollo with the Nine Muses by Baldassarre Peruzzi |
If you are a writer and are planning to attend Austin’s own
ArmadilloCon Convention, this is your heads up that the deadline to submit work
and sign up for their excellent Writers’ Workshop is fast approaching. Get your
5,000 word diamond in the rough together and submitted by June 15, 2014! I have participated in this workshop the past
few years and found it to be both inspiring and useful: well worth the price of
admission (which, by the way, also gets you into the con).
For those of us who don’t have the time or the funds to go
for the big name workshops like Clarion or Odyssey, know that many local cons
run writers’ workshops that will give you a chance to read and critique other
people's work and get a critique of your own project.
I’ve blogged about the usefulness of critique before. For
me, it is invaluable to get someone else’s eyes on my work at some stage in the
process. Also, since I enjoy the chance to socialize with other writers, my
regular in-person critique group keeps my daily writing routine from feeling too
cloistered.
I also use the Online Writing Workshop. OWW charges an
annual subscription fee, which, I feel, inspires a greater level of commitment
and participation. And, in the end, better crits. The site is well run, and
I’ve made connections with writers from all over the world trading crits there.
Over the past couple years I’ve built an informal schedule
for regularly critiquing and getting my own work critiqued. This has helped me
grow as a writer in several ways:
- Informal deadlines – Slugtribe meets on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month. I try to bring something in every 4 to 6 weeks. If a piece takes longer to get to a critique-able stage, I can just move that deadline out another two weeks. Still, having a meeting to go to gives me something to shoot for when I’m planning my daily writing.
- Regular face-to-face critiquing – Learning to articulate what is and is not working in a piece of writing has taught me more about writing than anything else. Having to think on the fly (at Slugtribe we read the work at the meeting) and put my ideas into words hones a different kind of assessment skill. Hearing what other people in the room think of the same piece of writing is also illuminating!
- Regular written critiques – With the online option, I can read a story over twice, make notes in the margins, and then put my thoughts into written form in a more coherent way. I try to put something up online every couple months, too. If, after a Slugtribe critique, I’ve made major changes to a story, I’ll submit the revised version to OWW to get fresh eyes on it. Other times, I’ll submit something new for a critique on the first or third week of the month.
- Making connections with other writers – I’ve met lots of other writers in all stages of development. We commiserate about the writing life, and trade tips and techniques about anything from punctuation to how to fit our writing in around kids and significant others.
Wherever you live, check out the resources around you. There
may already be a critique group meeting at your local library. If so, sit in on a few sessions and see if
their style suits you. If it doesn’t you can always start your own group. There
are also several other online options Lit Reactor is another subscription based
site for writers. Critters critique group is free and can be a good place to
start (though I found the critiques there varied pretty wildly as far as
quality).
The important thing is to find the groups and people and
schedule that works for you. You’re looking for a support system that inspires
you to write and finish more material.
In person or online, remember that it’s
you who’s auditioning the group, not the other way around. While there is no
perfect group (as they are all made up of humans after all), find or create a
network that supports you and keeps you moving forward.
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| Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly |
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