So, to con­tinue the theme of writ­ing advice, we move on to another ques­tion from Monday’s thread, this time from the LJ mir­ror by alaneer:

Here’s a prob­lem: how does one go about find­ing a small crit group whose mem­ber have to give crits in less than 2–3 weeks? Or form­ing a crit group like that.

This is a good ques­tion.  I  have no idea how any­one man­aged to learn sto­rycraft  in the age before the inter­net.  SF writ­ers were prob­a­bly spread over as much geog­ra­phy as they are today, so how did they cri­tique each other?  Postal mail?  In-person work­shops?    They’d have to meet some­how in the first place.  Ah, so they went to cons?  Those cost time and money.  Luckily,  we were born at a time where we could take advan­tage of nearly free, instan­ta­neous global com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and that means find­ing peo­ple will­ing to be in a cri­tique group is the least of your prob­lems.  Finding the right peo­ple is much more dif­fi­cult.    Here are some tech­niques that have helped me.

Join one of the larger estab­lished work­shop groups such as the Online Writer’s Workshop or Critters.    Personally, I’m an alum­nus of the OWW.  So is Sarah Prineas, Elizabeth Bear, Charles Coleman Finlay, and many oth­ers.  There’s lit­tle doubt in my mind that the expe­ri­ence of putting your work tho­rugh the OWW will improve it.    Will it get you a book deal or a pro sale?  Maybe.  You’re doing most of the work, but if you lis­ten to what peo­ple have to say, I think you will come closer sooner than you would have on your own.

When you first join these work­shops, you’re just throw­ing stuff at the wall and see­ing what sticks.  You have no idea who is going to read your story and pro­vide a cri­tique, at least in the case of the OWW.  While you’re wait­ing, you should go find work that you think is at least at your level of skill, if not sev­eral lev­els higher.  Provide a thought­ful cri­tique.  They won’t always return it, but some­times they will see some­thing they like in your work as well, and this is how you start build­ing ind­vid­i­ual relationships.

I no longer use the OWW, but I have kept in touch with many of the writ­ers from that work­shop for the pur­poses of cri­tiquing and of course due to the fact that they’re my friends.   In any large group work­shop, I think tal­ent has a way of find­ing like tal­ent.  Groups are formed within, and they can be exported eas­ily from the larger work­shop.  You will out­grow together the lower-level issues that work­shops address par­tic­u­larly well.

Another option is to just ask authors who you admire if you could trade cri­tiques with them.    This is how Jay Lake and I ended up trad­ing com­ments on each other’s stories.

Jay taught me a very valu­able notion, which was par­tic­u­larly help­ful when I was writ­ing a story a week or more and still look­ing for feed­back.  That was to build a list of first readers/critiquers, but make sure they know you don’t expect them to read every­thing you send out.  And vice versa.  Sometimes peo­ple have time, some­times they don’t.  In an ideal sit­u­a­tion, you’ll have enough peo­ple on your list that each piece of writ­ing you send out will get you sev­eral solid cri­tiques that will help you revise or deter­mine whether to send the story out at all.

I don’t really believe in form­ing groups per­say anymore–although I have been part of them from time to time, and I sus­pect groups like Blue Heaven are really great for what they do.  For the way I write, I just pre­fer to build indi­vid­ual, one-on-one rela­tion­ships.  Any time you get more than four writ­ers in a group, you will have pol­i­tics, and I have lit­tle tol­er­ance for that myself.  Maybe you like it? If so, form a group, set up a list-serve for email and go to town.

Any of the meth­ods above will help you with your ulti­mate goal, which is find­ing peo­ple with which to col­lab­o­ra­tively improve your work.   Also, you’ll prob­a­bly make good friends.  But I should point out, a good cri­ti­quer is not nec­es­sar­ily a good friend, and the oppo­site is often even less pos­si­ble.  Depending on how you react to the crit­i­cism, you end up hat­ing your best cri­ti­quers, but in a broc­coli kind of way.

Good luck.  Anyone who is inter­ested in trad­ing cri­tiques with me need only drop me a line.  I can’t agree to do so with every­one who asks, but I try to do so. I have a lot less time to cri­tique now that I am edit­ing Escape Pod.

Tagged as: critique, critters, OWW