When critique groups go bad
“Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it – whole-heartedly – and delete it before sending your manuscripts to press. Murder your darlings.”
― Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch
When
I met with our WOK (Writers of Kern) critique group leaders last month to hammer out the details
of our upcoming meeting on critique groups, I shared a story that I’d never
told anyone else. It’s private. It’s about writing—my writing. I had a critique
group experience that changed me, and I felt it was relevant to the discussion
so that our leaders would understand that the critique group experience can be
as damaging as it can be helpful.
You
know the damage I’m talking about. Our writers’ egos are delicate little
creatures of an unstable existence. One strong gust of criticism can wipe out a
single project like a tornado sucking up a two-story house. Poof. Gone. Only
the foundation left.
Several
years ago I was writing a historic romance novel. My creative writing
instructor had called it “literature,” to which my ego answered, “Yes, of
course it is!” believing that my writing was an incredible, grammatically sound piece
of uncommon art. Clearly I had channeled Jane Austen.
In
truth, it simply had no sex scenes in it.
Yet.
Nonetheless,
I took my confidence and my beautifully written tome to a romance writers critique group, where I met two lovely ladies who remain my friends today. They are both
multi-published writers in the historical romance genre—the bodice ripping, sex
having, sword wielding books that fill most of the bookstore (and my office) shelves. I was
grateful they were letting me into their critique group.
By
the time I summoned the courage to share my first novel chapter with them, I’d
been participating several weeks. They were a little rough on each other, but
nothing prepared me for how indelicate they would be with my piece.
“You
can’t DO THAT!” one said as she slammed her pencil to the table.
“You’ll
never get published if you write like this,” said the other in a calmer
tone. “Say what you mean without all
these extra words. Just get to the point!”
“This
just doesn’t work,” the first said with the disgust of someone trying to dress
a dead rat. “You need to re-write this entire chapter.”
They
murdered my words, and with it, my confidence to write in that genre. I
collected my battered pages and made the changes they wanted, despite the
feedback I’d gotten from my college professor who’d called the manuscript literature. I
made the changes, and do you know what happened? I hated it. I hated it so much I put it away
in a cupboard and never looked at the 25 chapters again.
That
was nine years ago. Then, this December, tired and ragged from marathon
editing sessions for two patient clients who’d waited their turn behind my
Halloween business, I accidentally bumped into my old manuscript. I was rooting
around in a cupboard far over my head when my hand touched the familiar pages.
Winds of Change.
There it was. I flipped to the middle of the
book and read it with the fresh eyes of an editor now. And I loved it. It’s the
best piece of fiction I’ve ever created, and I let it die because of an
unfortunate experience with a critique group.
Maybe
that’s why I’m so passionate about making our critique groups work at WOK. And
that’s definitely why I spend time ensuring our critique groups understand how
even criticism, when couched as “invitations to reconsider,” can be delivered
kindly and without the assumption that any one of us is qualified to murder a
darling.
We
can suggest it. We can even be an accomplice if asked.
But
we cannot be the one to wield the knife and deliver the fatal blow. We just can't.
Labels: Critique Groups, Writers of Kern, Writing