Crack your knuckles and warm up your keyboards, it’s time to polish up your short story or first chapter for the annual Armadillocon Writing Workshop!
Submissions are DUE Friday June 15, 2018
This is an excellent, low-cost workshop for writers who want to:
Work with professional writers and editors familiar with speculative fiction, science fiction, and fantasy.
Learn how to give and receive critique in a small-group, face-to-face setting
Find out if workshops and in-person critique groups are useful to their writing progress
Find their tribe and make connections with others that will serve their writing year round.
Take their writing to the next level.
The workshop will be Friday, August 3, 2018
We will spend the morning in panels on the craft and business of writing and doing a writing exercise or two. Then, lunch with the professional writers and fellow students in your breakout critique group. The afternoon will be spent in in-depth, collaborative critique sessions where you will be both giving and receiving critique.
Just $90 gets you the full-day workshop and a full convention membership to attend all of the activities for the entire weekend. ArmadilloCon is an excellent regional literary convention, which means there will be lots of great panels about writing, reading, and the state of the genre (there are also panels about movies, tv shows, gaming, and everything geek).
Sponsored seats for writers of color!
We are committed to promoting diversity and access for all workshop attendees. Writing in a genre centered on exploration and encountering the Other must include voices and visions from writers and readers of all kinds. The Workshop actively seeks to include students, faculty, visiting scholars, and volunteers from a variety of backgrounds including, but not limited to race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, economic status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, and ability.
To that purpose we are offering a limited number of sponsored seats to the workshop for writers of color. To apply for a seat, follow the link on the workshop page.
The aphorism, “A good conversation never ends, it’s only
interrupted” comes to mind. I feel the same about the stories I write.
Creators, artists, and writers are always striving to improve their craft. Reaching
for perfection, always falling a few inches short. This is why it can be hard
to determine when to call a piece you’ve struggled over finished. For me, it’s
more about knowing when to let it go.
Creating something is its own reward and its own punishment.
Every story starts with some nugget of inspiration, a character, a mood I want
to capture, a moment I want to bring to life. It’s this vision that compels me
to create the first draft. Invariably, after writing it out, and working
through however many revisions, what I end up with is NEVER what I originally
imagined. I won’t say it’s better or worse, but it is different. Even when I am
happy with the final result, there is always a tiny nagging feeling of missing
the mark.
If you keep writing and working to improve, you will look
back at old stories, even the ones that are published and see ways that they
might be improved. I remind myself that that was the best story I could produce
last week or last year or three years ago. M. Rickert says her old
stories are like snapshots of the writer she was at the time she wrote them.
It’s important to strive for excellence, at the same time
once you feel you’ve made a story the best you can – let it go. It may be flawed,
have some element that you wish you could manage more astutely, but if it’s
viable (i.e. has a plot with a beginning middle and end, a character who changes or
comes to a realization, etc.), then it’s time to let it go (today, that might
mean sending it to the ArmadilloCon Writing Workshop). Submit somewhere for
publication and move on to the next story with the goal to make that one
better.
Whether I see you at the ArmadilloCon Writers Workshop or
not – I hope you go forth and write story after story. I look forward to
reading all of them out in the wild!
A week from today,
writers from far and wide will be gathering in Austin for The Armadillocon Writers’ Workshop. I’m excited to take my place among the pros this year. This
is my hometown con. I have been a student of this workshop for several years
and have learned a lot about the craft and art of writing from the wide range
of professional writers that make this workshop so special.
I know workshops
can be a daunting proposition. Since I started writing seriously, I’ve gone
beyond the Writers’ Workshop. I attend my local in-person critique group and participate
in online critique communities. These activities have both improved my writing,
and thickened my skin a bit when it comes to presenting a brand new piece of
writing to a group of people who I’ve implicitly and explicitly tasked with
finding its faults.
It’s hard, after
investing so much in a story, to hear about all the ways its not working yet.
It’s like finding out my beautiful baby is a Frankenstein’s monster after all. (But
fear not, after some excisions, new body parts, and some clever suturing, my
readers might just see a thing of beauty after all. And with luck, they’ll love
it as much as I did when I struggled to create it.)
Workshopping is
not for everyone, but you’ll never know if a workshop or critique group is
valuable to your process until you try it, so here are some thoughts to get you
through the experience. Many workshops
(including Armadillocon) use the Milford method of critique, or at least the
essence of it, which is: “The author whose work is
being critiqued has to sit in silence through the first part in which each
participant in turn is allowed an uninterrupted four minutes to deliver their
critique. Then the author gets an uninterrupted right to reply. Following that
a general discussion ensues.”
I believe that
the single most important reason that this method works so well is that it
forces you to:
No speaking up
while receiving your critique. This is more than just good manners, it is a
crucial skill that every writer should hone. You may feel like you, or your
work, is on trial. You are not. It is not. When people are engaged in a debate
or a conversation they tend to spend the time when the other person is talking
formulating a response. When you are thinking about what you are going to say,
you are not listening. Regardless of the stated rules of any particular
workshop or critique group, practice not only shutting your mouth, which will
give you the appearance of polite propriety, but also opening your mind so you
can really hear. This is hard, I think because it is hard for us to truly
receive anything, say nothing of critical notes on a piece of our own writing.
Your group is a
collection of writers trying to improve their craft, but it’s important to
remember that you are all readers, too. Listen for the ways these readers go
astray, look for patterns. Is everyone getting hung up on a certain detail,
wondering what a character looked like, or how the knight’s horse got from the
stable to the field? More than once I’ve been rewarded for really listening.
Even the person who is entirely off base regarding what I am trying to accomplish
with a particular story, will often have valuable insights embedded in their
feedback, little gems that I would have missed if I wasn’t giving that person
my full attention.
You will hear multiple
opinions on your story. This is a great opportunity to compare your intention,
your vision, to what others are actually receiving when they read it. Until
telepathy becomes a reality, what you are trying to communicate with a story,
and what your reader gets will never be the same thing.
Be kind to
yourself. In the heat of creation I’m investing myself in the story, sometimes
the drafts come easy, sometimes they come hard. Either way, I’m often riding
high when I finish. Sometimes, I’m even convinced that this piece is pretty
damn good; sometimes it is, sometimes not so much. It can be hard to tell when
I’m still so close to it.
More than once
I’ve gone in to my crit group thinking I’ll just get their stamp of approval,
they’ll catch a couple typos, and I’ll be sending it to editors tomorrow. It
hurts to find out that my story isn’t quite working yet, that there are confusions
and problems that still need to be solved. That it will take more time and hard
work before this story will become all that it can be.
If you are pushing
yourself you will have some brilliant successes, but more often you will fall
down, will write something that has moments of brilliance but is also deeply
flawed – this is a good thing. Achieving excellence is a long hard road, but
that’s the road you’re on, right? Be kind to yourself. Catch your breath. Set
your story aside for a few days. When you pick it up again, read all the
positive comments first; fluff up your ego a bit before taking the next step.
With most
groups, you will be sent home with half a dozen copies of your manuscript
riddled with notes, some of which will agree, others will directly contradict
each other. This is the tricky part. You want to keep your ego somewhat intact,
but there’s no point in workshopping a story if you’re not going to consider any of the advice. At the same time, it
is important not to rank everyone else’s opinion over your own. As a writer,
one of your greatest assets is your voice, and I think the quickest ways to
destroy your unique voice is to try to implement every note given. You have to assess
all these notes and opinions and decide what to take.
Before going
through the notes, I believe the best thing you can do is sit down and really
think about what you’re trying to accomplish with this particular story. What
is your goal with this piece? If the first draft is about figuring out how to write it, this draft is about the
Why. Why did you tell this particular
story in this particular mode? I will usually work this out in my journal. Once
I have the Why of the story, I can better see which comments to use and which
to disregard.
Reading other
people’s stories critically is one of the best exercises by which writers can learn
their craft. When critiquing, I read for comprehension, plot and flow, marking
the manuscript as I go. I note places where I’m confused, phrases that seem out
of the idiom for the setting or characters. I write questions that pop into my
head as I’m reading.
Afterwards, I
think about the story as a whole and make a guess at what the writer is trying
to accomplish with this particular piece. When I give feedback, I usually say,
this is what I think you’re trying to do here and these are the things that
worked/didn’t work – for me. Using phrases like “I think” and “for me” are not capitulations
or ways to soften the blows of a critique – it’s an acknowledgement that I am
one reader. The things that bother me may not bother the next person.
Be kind to
others. Receiving critical comments on something that I worked very hard on,
something that I may still have deep emotional ties to is hard. So when giving
feedback I want to be kind. It is not kind to refrain from pointing out the
weak spots in a manuscript because you don’t want to upset a fellow writer. On
the other hand it is not kind to shred someone else’s work in the name of
artistic perfection.
In a regular
critique group, you will get to know your fellow crit mates and may be able to
be more frank in your feedback. But often you may find yourself in a group – like
The Armadillocon Writers’ Workshop – where you are meeting your workshop mates
in person for the first time at the critique session. In either situation is
always a good practice to find the positives of any given piece. I like to lead
off with a couple specific examples of things I enjoyed. In the middle I’ll
bring up the elements that were problematic, confusions, and anything that
pulled me out of the story. After talking about the weaknesses, I like to
finish on a high note with my impression of what the strengths are for the
piece in particular or aspects of the writing that are working well in general.
And with those
thoughts, I wish you happy writing, happy workshopping, and happy revising!
I have participated in the wonderful ArmadilloCon Writers’ Workshop for several years, last year I volunteered, and this year I’ll be
sitting on the other side of the table as a pro! I’m so excited to be giving
back to the Workshop, as it has been a staple of my progress as a writer.
But, the Workshop isn’t just about the big names. The pros
contributing their time to the workshop represent today’s diversity in writing
and publishing. These are men and women writing across a variety of styles, formats
and genres. There are writers who are traditionally published, and writers who
successfully self-publish, and everything in between.
The all-day workshop costs $79.50, which includes lunch and
a full (3-day) Con membership.The ratio
of pros to workshop attendees is excellent (usually two pros per three to five
attendees), so it’s a true small-group workshop experience.
The workshop isn’t only about collecting critiques on your
brilliant work of genius. It’s participatory. Once you sign up and turn in your
piece you will be placed in a group of fellow workshop attendees and receive
your group-mates brilliant works of genius to read and critique.
If you are new to workshopping, learning to assess someone
else’s work is an excellent way to develop your own writing. I’ve learned at
least as much from putting together a coherent, constructive critique of
someone else’s work as getting feedback on my own . Putting together your
thoughts about your workshop mates stories can also take the edge off waiting
to hear how your own piece went over. In the end you’ll go home with written
and verbal critiques by the other writers in your group along with critiques by
at least two of the attending workshop pros.
I enjoy group critiques. I regularly participate in online
and in-person critique groups, but it is not for everyone. Some people do
better with, say, a single beta reader, some people do just fine without any
critique of their works-in-progress at all. The ArmadilloCon Writers’ Workshop
is a great way to experience a group critique situation at a fraction of the
cost of some of the big genre workshops like Viable Paradise, Odyssey, or Clarion.
So, dust off that story that isn’t quite working or get
cracking on something brand new. The deadline to submit a short story or first
chapter is June 15. The maximum word count is 5,000 words firm (i.e. they mean it). Go here to check out the specifics.
The Writers’ Workshop will be on Friday July 24th, ArmadilloCon 37 runs from July 24th through the 26th
I didn’t blog last week because I was preparing for the
Turkey City Writers’ Workshop, which happened Saturday, October 18. I found it
to be a useful and positive experience. It is also a ton of work. They don’t
call them workshops for nothing.
Turkey City has been around since the early seventies, and
its participants through the decades are a who’s who of genre writers,
especially cyberpunk. This workshop is geared for advanced writers, and is
known for its tough love approach. The expectation is that all the attendees
have mastered the basic techniques of writing and storymaking. I found this to
be the case for the most part. Even the less experienced participants brought
material worth discussing, in my opinion.
For the past few years Chris Brown has graciously
hosted it in his amazing home. He also participated with an excellent story
that sat right at the intersection of genre and literary and wonderfully
captured the gestalt of Austin hacker scene.
This year the word limit was 10,000 words, and with twelve
people participating, well, you do the math – that’s a lot of preparatory
reading. Not everyone turned in a novelette, but since my regular crit group
limits pieces to 5,000 words, I did relish the opportunity to submit something
longer.
We were six men and six women, and with strong female voices
such as Patrice Sarath and Stina Leicht attending, I found the opinions and
insights well balanced along gender lines. Anil Menon and Jasmina Tesanovic
also provided international and literary perspectives to our pieces. All in all
there were plenty of fascinating, quirky, and useful opinions to go around.
I was determined to bring something new to my first Turkey
City and worked hard to complete a 9,000-word novelette from a previous
fragment. It was pretty green. If I’d had all the time in the world, I would
have taken it through one more revision before submitting it to group critique.
It got dinged on the things I pretty much expected it would. Elements of the
story are a little pat; the characters tend toward types. Subtlety and nuance,
for me, tends to blossom in revision. The first pass is usually about setting
the storyline and expressing the characters basic traits. (I’m one of those
weirdos who likes revising way more than pounding out the first draft.)
I also got some excellent food for thought, especially from
Bruce Sterling, who was the idea man of the critique group. He threw out all
sorts of alternative scenarios for my story and its characters that really
freed up the way I was thinking about it. The novelette is taking a
well-deserved rest this week. Next week I’ll pull it apart and revise it and
get it out there into the world.
On its most basic level, preparing a story for critique provides me with both an informal deadline and a great intermediate milestone for a work in progress.
If all goes according to plan, getting a story critiqued is one of the last rungs on the ladder to completing it and sending it out for publication. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always come out that way.
So, how do I know when something is ready for critique?
I don’t submit first drafts to critique. In fact, I don’t show my first drafts to anyone. I need the security of “only my eyes will ever see this mess” in order to write bravely and take chances. The second draft is all about the big picture, major character adjustments, and fixing obvious plot holes. In the third draft, I clean things up and attend to style paragraph by paragraph and sentence by sentence.
At this point, I’ve arrived at the place where I feel I’ve taken the story as far as I can by myself. This is when comments from others feel most useful. Sometimes, I know there is some aspect that isn’t quite working, or some element that is out of balance, but I can’t figure out how to fix it. This is where a nice range of comments can really help me get unstuck.
I usually feel that the story is close to being finished, and I’m itching to wrap this project up and get on to the next one. Of course, sometimes my story isn’t close at all. See my post: Story Fail, Critique Win. Yeah, it’s disappointing. Writing stories requires a certain amount of ego, like when an actor takes a part; I really have to commit emotionally to the story I’m working on. It’s tough to find out that I’m farther from the finish line than I thought, especially when there isn’t always a clear fix.
Writing a good story is complicated, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. A good set of critiques will not give you a single solution but many. It can be frustrating. Sussing out several opinions and ideas about a broken story is hard work. But finding a way forward and revising it is also a creative act; one that has led me to take my stories to places I hadn’t imagined at first.
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.
Another post about failing and just how awesome it can be!
I brought the first half of my novelette, Izzy Crow, to my local critique group on Tuesday night where it pretty much totally fell down. While
everyone agreed that the writing was fine on the micro level (I like to think
that I’ve achieved some competency in that area), the most consistent reaction overall was confusion. I want to elicit
many emotions in a reader, but confusion is definitely not one of them.
While writing, I had hoped that I was pulling things off
brilliantly. Yet I’m not surprised by my writing fail. Whenever I’m drafting
I’m working hard to create the best story I ever have (my goal with each new
project). I believe that you have to go into the first draft with a little hubris.
A hubris born from an original idea so awesome that it inspired me to undertake
the whole mad project in the first place. Hubris is also fuel for the engine
that powers me through the thousands of words it takes to get the mangled
corpse of the brilliant idea down on the page.
Another other thing that informs my first drafts is a piece
of advice that I remember from last year’s Armadillocon. Unfortunately, I can’t
remember who said it. It was during the opening session, when all the authors,
editors, and various experts were arrayed across half the room, firing all their
words of advice at us acolytes like so much buckshot. The advice was:
Don’t be afraid to fail.
A lot of things have to happen if you want to continue to
get better. You have to show up and do the work and you have to learn the craft,
but you can’t just keep coloring inside the lines. Failing is all about putting
yourself out there. Trying something crazy, untenable, something nobody’s ever
tried before, because if you always stay safe inside your zone of competency,
you’ll never really breakthrough. I believe that to create something great,
something transcendent, you have to keep making that leap. Or as Robert Browning put it:
"Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a
heaven for?"
And that leap guarantees failure. That’s why failure is my
friend. I really believe that you can’t find out what doesn’t work – until it
doesn’t work. You can’t skip failing, just like you couldn’t skip falling down
when you were learning to walk.
As for as the critique: I don’t bring a piece of writing to
the group until I feel like it’s at a point were people can at least see what
I’m trying to achieve. But by the
middle draft, it’s been just me and the story for so long and I’m so deep into
it that I can’t judge it any more. I really can’t tell if it’s great or
terrible. And honestly, I’m usually a little bored with it too. Hearing
everyone discuss what they saw – and didn’t see – in the story, can both reset
my compass, and get me fired up about it all over again.
The group was able to tell me where they were confused and
why, and what they were (and mostly weren’t) getting out of it emotionally.
This is invaluable. They tossed around a lot of ideas that really got my brain
cooking. Instead of coming home depressed that this piece of writing wasn’t working,
I was excited and stayed up way too late restructuring, reoutlining, and
sketching in the scenes that will make this into a different, but definitely
better, story.
After reading my post about finishing the first draft of my novelette Izzy Crow, my brother asked, When do I get to read it? I'm afraid the answer is, not for a while. I think of a story idea, sit down and write it out, and that's really where things are just getting started. I followed my own advice with this story and wrote fast and let it be a big, bountiful mess, which will need a lot of taming before it resembles a finished story. One of my favorite short story writers, George Saunders talks about about his approach to story being an iterative process. He explains that even if he doesn't know exactly what a story is about when he starts it, if he keeps returning to it over and over again through revisions, the true meaning of the story kind of accretes (Check out the article and listen to the whole interview here). I think this is true. In any creative pursuit, it becomes apparent that while you can work faster, there are no shortcuts. Here are the steps in my process as it is today. It may change and evolve as I continue to push myself to become a better writer.
First is the idea of course, usually followed by a little preliminary research. I don't factor this into the time it takes to produce a finished story. I keep a collection of ideas simmering in my journal, and when I have a spare minute or two I'll poke around the Internet for information that will help grow a particular idea until I've got enough to start writing. For example, for the story I'm working on this week (remember a story a week!): I'm reading about the different kinds of environments tidally locked planets might have. I am actually doing this concurrent with writing the first draft.
First draft. "Ground Zero" can mean either the point directly below an exploding nuclear bomb, or a starting point for some activity. In writing, I think both definitions are apt. This set of half formed characters and events have to go from my brain to the page and even when I start with something, it feels like starting from nothing. The process can be quite disfiguring, in that what you end up with can be pretty unrecognizable when compared with the original idea, but that's not always a bad thing.
First read through with notes for big changes. This is where I assess what I got with my first attempt. Theoretically I could abandon a story at this point, but I haven't done that yet. I usually do a little additional research here, filling in missing information and searching for specific, vivid details to add.
Second draft. Here I implement all the stuff I got from the first read, making big changes. Reshaping by cutting big swaths out and chunking in new material including said detail (from a hopefully brief trip to the land of research). At some point around here, my understanding of the themes of the piece usually come into better focus, which may cause another sub-round of cutting and chunking.
Third draft. These are smaller adjustments, smoothing it all out, paragraph and sentence level work, style, tone, tweaking metaphors and language to highlight said theme. This can take a long time. Writing a good sentence is hard.
Critique. Now I'm ready to let a few people see it. Slugtribe, my in-person critique group meets the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays of every month, or I can send it off to the Online Writing Workshop, crits usually take about a week to come back from that site. I find getting feedback from others essential to the process. This is also a chance for me to step away from this story for a few days. It's amazing what I'll see when I look at it after a break.
Final revisions. Assessing all the critiques and incorporating the useful comments AND a final proofing read through (yup, still finding typos).
first read through
Each of these six stages can take a week or more, and that's a minimum, what with hubby and kids and the dog and life intervening and all. Some stories are harder than others, they put up more resistance, require more revisions to really get at the nut of the thing. This year I am trying out drafting a NEW story every week, so I am working on the new thing in the morning and revising older stories in the afternoons and evenings. I expect I will be writing more flash fiction (stories under 1,000 words) and probably some poetry on weeks when I want to devote more time to revising a longer story. So, finally the story is finished. Time to start submitting it. Notice I didn't say "time to submit it" I said "time to START SUBMITTING it." So far, all of my published stories have been submitted to a minimum of 3 markets and a maximum of 15. That's 15 rejections before an editor said yes. Some markets will respond very quickly, within a week, but many take a month or two or three. Zombie Envy, just published this month, and another one that is forthcoming (which I will get to announce soon!) were finished in EARLY 2012. Maybe as I get more story-writing skillz, I'll get on a faster track here. But I know that plenty of great stories also get rejected because they don't fit the theme or aesthetic of a given publication. The only thing to do is send it out, forget it, and get back to work on the current story. So, I hope to finish Izzy Crow by the end of February or early March, then I'll start sending it out. When it gets accepted for publication, believe me, you'll be the first to know!
The ArmadilloCon Writers' Workshop was excellent again this year. The morning was devoted to a wide-ranging discussion about different aspects of writing and publishing. Pros who write, edit, publish and review all had great advice and opinions about the process of writing and the business of getting published. After lunch we broke into separate critique groups. The ratio of pros to students was nearly 1:1. My group had four students and three pros! (Cat Rambo, Liz Gorinsky from Tor, and Stina Leicht) Everyone, student and pro alike, put their egos aside and came to work. I feel like everyone gave and got good feedback for the chapters and stories they brought. I'll be revising my short story next week and look forward to sending it out into the world. I have always felt that both getting AND giving critiques are valuable tools when learning how to write. There are so many techniques that you must manage to produce really good prose. When I write I try to get inside the story, the characters, and their world. It's easy to loose perspective about what's working and what isn't. Putting the work away for a few days can help (and I do that too). But getting a critical perspective on a work in progress is often what will help me take it to the next level. The key is a CRITICAL perspective. It sounds scary, and the endeavor is not without pitfalls. There isn't really any instruction for critiquing, so most of us just have to learn how to do it any way we can. The world of critiquing is full of trolls and ogres who will tear your work down so they can show how brilliant they are (NOT). There are well-meaning dolts, toadies and yes men (usually relatives) only interested in heaping praise on anything you show them. Learning how to give good criticism will help you recognize and find good critiquers for your own work. I started out reading slush for the Austin Film Festival's annual screenwriting competition. I would recommend looking for slush work. It's an eye-opening introduction to the basics of presentation and storytelling, and you don't need that much experience to weed out the awful. Most of the time the only option is to dive in. Take a workshop if you can, or look for a group in your area. Many people form their own groups after attending a workshop like the
ArmadilloCon Writer's Workshop. With Skype and other chat services it's
possible to have a real-time discussion regardless of where you all live. Here in Austin, Texas I attend the Slugtribe writer's group, which is an open critique group. I like meeting face-to-face because it allows for a give and take that can be useful and illuminating. People in the group can ask you questions and tailor their comments to your stated intention. Also, people can disagree, which often generates a discussion about the piece that goes in interesting places.
When you're live and/or in-person the Milford rules are a good format, which is essentially keep your trap shut - and listen, really listen - while everyone gives their thoughts and impressions on your work. Don't worry you'll get your turn at the end. But remember a critique is not about you defending your work against all comers, it's about problem solving and making what you've done better. You may find that learning how to articulate how a story isn't working, will teach you as much about writing techniques as any book or class. Good criticism requires you to fully engage with the work of others; to think not about how YOU would write this story or chapter but about what this writer is trying to accomplish. The more you learn how to give it the easier it is to take it. Getting good criticism helps you to develop a thick skin, because you can't write good
stories without becoming emotionally involved, and even if you know they
aren't perfect, it still hurts to have their imperfections pointed out. Also, it will teach you to be brave. By accepting errors (in a story in particular or your work in general), you reduce their cost. Once you see that the flaws pointed out by a good critique session can be addressed, you can spend less time perfecting your work before anybody sees it and more time being daring and trying new techniques. There are also some online groups out there for genre writers. Most of them require you to critique other members' work in order to put yours up for critique, providing both an opportunity to give and receive critiques. The downsides of these groups are the same as with any web-based endeavor of this sort: from amateur or lazy critiques to snark and worse. I still think it's better than nothing, just gird yourself for the experience. Critters is an open and free group. It's quite high volume and can be a good place to start. Currently, I use the Online Writing Workshop they charge a small annual fee. I feel that this investment shows in both higher quality work and better critiques. Just remember to critique in the spirit of generosity. No matter
how bad someone's work is, they were still brave enough to put it out
there, so find a way to be both kind and honest. Just remember, it's about the work and, I believe, about supporting each other on the journey.
