Critique Group: It’s free editing and a whole lot more

Having a critique partner or group that you routinely swap WIPs and writer tips is just another way to take your writing to a higher level faster. We all need to be edited, and swapping services is the most cost-effective way to go.

I came up with a snazzy acronym for the benefits of critique groups: AGE. Critique partners keep each other Accountable, Grow together, and Encourage one another.

Accountability

I’m a writer who is perfectly happy living in a cave all by myself with my laptop. Well, maybe a cave by a beach, with internet access and a nearby library. However, if I had all that, including the isolation, I would still be easily distracted by checking email and reading other people’s books (aka, market research).

But, it’s harder to slack off if you have other people keeping tabs on your progress. It’s that peer pressure thing. Especially if they, too, are busy writing away. (Now if we all slack off at the same time, our group will be in trouble!)

Be sure to share your writing goals with your critique group. Not just your current work, but your career goals. They’ll help you get there.

Growth

This month I’m taking an online class and have two new critique partners—complete strangers—who are privy to chapters that few people have seen. What is nice about sharing your work with other writers is they are other writers. They get it. They know a WIP is a work in progress. Every word, exchange, or description is subject to change. And you don’t have to explain that to them.

Get to the next level together by taking classes together. You can then critique each other’s work with an eye for what you have all learned. The class I’m taking now is led by Margie Lawson. My new critique partners are using the language of the class when we analyze each other’s work. We make comments like: “power up” this sentence, cliché alert!, or backload. We sound like mini-Margies. (That photo above is a veiled version of my WIP after lecture #4.)

Because you are growing together, you’ve got to be specific and honest with your feedback. A writer can’t do much with “it was good.” I’d rather hear my WIP is not ready to submit from my critique group than have said WIP get rejected by every agent on my list.

And in the same way you grow as a writer, you should grow as critquer. (Is that a word?) You learn what makes good writing. You learn how to spot weak writing and tell why it is weak writing.

Encouragement

Writers hear their fair share of the word “no” (no thank you, not a fit for us, not up my alley,…. uh, silence) so it helps to have people ready to encourage you to keep submitting even when you want to crawl back into your personal library and stay there for awhile.

Kitty, Stephanie, and I are copying a group of writers who go out for a “suicide dinner” whenever one of them gets a rejection. We are working on our “suicide list.” (Please don’t stage an intervention. It’s all in good fun…maybe we need to rename it!) So far our list is empty, but whenever one of us gets a rejection or has a tough time with some aspect of writing we ask, “How many points is that on the suicide list?”