I’m about to slather you with unsolicited advice. Hey, I remember telling you all to unsubscribe from this blog and follow JenKirchner.com instead so if you’re still here, it’s not my fault.
Except for my friends. You have to be here. (Sorry, friends.)
And now, it’s time for another episode of “Unsolicited Advice” with your host, Ranty McRanterson!
Well, I have a microphone, and you don't, SO YOU WILL LISTEN TO EVERY DAMN WORD I HAVE TO SAY!
Something happened earlier this week. Not to me, but to a writer friend. This friend happens to be one of the sweetest people I’ve met. She threw out a Tweet saying she thinks someone in her writers’ critique group was making fun of her. Immediately, my Spidey Senses Douchebag Detector started tingling. She then forwarded me an incriminating email where an unnamed person attempted to provide feedback on a portion of her novel.
Remember the infamous MTV Awards where the all-American sweetheart Taylor Swift won the “Best Female Music Video Award”, but Kanye West ran on stage, grabbed the microphone from her and declared Beyonce had the greatest video of all time? OF ALL TIME?
The email was like that, only less coherent.
I believe what the person was trying to say was that one of the character’s reactions didn’t ring true to him. Only he was saying it in the most sarcastic and demeaning way possible.
I talked to my writing friend about her critique group. Apparently she’s the only person in the group who is actually writing anything. She gets feedback from only a couple of people — including the moron who sent her the email*. She seemed kind of scared to let the group go, since she is determined to get critique and be connected to other writers… and this crap is all she has.
So listen up, writers! I’m about to rock your world with this tidbit of wisdom:
You don’t need a freaking crit group.
No, seriously. When I first started writing, I blogged every day. And then I came home, grabbed the laptop, and went into a dark hole all by myself, and wrote stories. Bad ones. I did that every single day for years. I didn’t wait for a crit group to tell me if I was on the mark; I just kept writing. And you know what? I got better. The more I wrote, the better I became.
Just go into your hole and keep writing.
It’s okay. I mean, I get it. I once thought I needed a critique group, too. I wanted feedback very badly. I still do. Unfortunately, the standard critique group didn’t work for me. For one thing, you’re matched with all different skill levels and, for another, people just weren’t as serious about writing and improving.
Oh, yeah. There are lots of people who attend crit groups and have no intention of working at improvement. That shouldn’t surprise anyone. After all, people spend small fortunes to attend colleges with no intention of learning anything. People treat crit groups the same way. When you’re determined to be a great writer, you quickly find that these little groups are a waste of time. And I can’t respect their attitudes toward writing, so why should I respect what they have to say about my work?
The answer is: I don’t.
Writers, you must be selective about who speaks into your writing life.
There’s nothing wrong with being selective. It doesn’t make you mean or snooty. It makes you serious about improving and will protect you from a lot of bad advice. If you’re at the stage where you feel you need critique, remember:
Good advice will help you grow as a writer. Bad advice will cause you to, uh… get gangrene and you’ll have to chop off an arm or something.
You know what I mean. If you’re serious about writing, you can’t afford to receive bad crit.
Date various writers like you do before you get married. Not everyone is going to be suited to you. And I also think writing relationships wane and sometimes you even grow apart. Try out different people with no commitments. Send them a half chapter and see what they say.
Are they actively working on a writing project that you respect?
Do you have similar goals?
Do they take a month to provide feedback?
Do their comments inspire you to continue writing or do you want to jump from the top floor?
Do you feel that their writing is strong and can stand up to yours, or are you propping them up?
Do you respect them as a writer?
Do they respect you as a writer?
Do they accept feedback well?
Be flexible and figure out a loose system that works for you and your partners.
Now that I’m involved with novelists that I respect, I find that getting a scheduled hour together is impossible. The hours we can eek out of our work and family schedule go straight to writing time. Instead, I’ve learned to just email off a section of work, and I know that I’ll hear back in a few days. I don’t get stressed or worried — we’re all working hard on novels and web stuff, and pinning people down to tight crit deadlines is a cruel ask.
Remember, there’s no hard feelings if it’s not a good match. I’ve given work to writing friends before and all I got back was, “I liked this a lot — will send in-depth notes as soon as I can.”
And then never heard more.
It doesn’t mean that they are bad writers or bad crit partners — in fact, I consider many of these people friends. It just means we are not well-suited to one another in writing. I know lots of people who make great spouses… to other people. It’s not personal, it’s just that you can’t be a good match for everyone and visa versa.
I now understand why agents are so picky about finding writers they love. I want to mesh. I don’t want to take on a piece of work that I don’t love reading and critiquing. (I’ve done that and it’s agony.) I want to have similar goals and work ethic. You should, too.
If you can’t find that right now, no crit group is better than a crappy one.
* Before you ask why no one was talking to the idiot Kanye-crit group guy, I already asked. Apparently everyone’s response was that this guy is just being super funny! Not funny to me. I would have kicked him from the group. Since they won’t kick him from the group or talk to him about his damaging advice, my advice was to drop the group immediately.
