Critique Group

I attended my first critique group today. It went well. This was the first time the group was meeting so we handed out what we wanted critiqued, in this case a chapter, and then went over expectations. I am pretty excited/terrified about this. I almost didn’t go but I sucked it up and did it. The first rule we talked about was: be nice. Best rule ever! Most of the people in the group are also in the discussion group I go to. This means some very important things:

I am very comfortable. This matters because if I get too nervous in the situation I’ll look for an escape. I’m going to make this my comfort zone.
I’ve been hearing about the other people’s stories for a while now but not read any of them. It will be great to really dive into these amazing worlds.
While I think everyone will be nice about it, no one will be too afraid to tell me if something I wrote is awful. Sometimes it’s easy to get too close to a project and lose objectivity.

There are more benefits of course.

Osmosis. You can’t be around super creative people without having your own creativity stirred.
I might be in a position to truly help other writers. That’s something I think every writer should strive for.
Each of us will only get better.

This won’t be the first time I’ve been critiqued but it will be the first time I’ve done this in a group setting. Wish me luck and I’ll post an update next week on how it goes.

5 comments

I hope all is well – You have such wonderful and great articles – I wanted to reach you as I am worried if you are receiving my comments, I hope to hear from you!

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I hope your comments encourage others to join a critique group. Like you, I’ve found my participation in a local critique group to have been invaluable.

When I was in Organizational Development, one of the team building exercises we conducted was called “Snowstorm Survival.” It presented the participants with a life-or-death scenario, and listed the available resources, such as maps, kindling, rope, etc. Each team member, working alone, would rank the value of those items. Then they were put into teams and asked to re-evaluate them.

The OD coordinator would grade the individual and team results against the actual value of the items on hand as determined by actual survival experts. Every time we conducted this exercise, the teams working together came significantly closer to accurately accessing the survival value of the items on hand than anyone working alone.

Cooperation is a powerful thing, something we lone-wolf writers should employ when possible.

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