I read this a while back, then came looking for it tonight after our informal writers group session. Two members had brought up the idea that we ought to have a leader, a facilitator, and I’d mentioned I’d read they should be paid and a non-submitter of work.

Although no one was willing to relinquish their rights to be workshopped, and no one was willing/able to pay such a person, we did decide on a leader, and there was a definite positive effect on the evening as a result.

My experience with this group, while young, is rather positive. We’re limiting the group to about 10, 5 who come steadily. I wonder what you think about off and on attendees and ideal group sizes?

20 years, 3 kids, two states and 5 pets later, I have lots of Life experience under my belt. I’ve listened to lots of NPR, read lots and lots of Nonfiction books, experienced anxiety, depression, and a minor heart attack, and I have something to say.

I’ve watched my children read books in high school that I didn’t read until college. I’ve pored over my daughter’s AP English Composition book, reading many of the varied compositions, learning a little along side her, while I read books on yoga, and Buddhism , Animal behavior, human behavior, memoir, and health. I’ve read books and podcasts and documentaries about Einstein, and God, about Robert Frost and Gandhi, and Thoreau.

My Children have read many more classics than I have. But My Book shelves are filled with more, “obscure” books- on Native American Totems, and The God Particle, and St. Francis of Assisi. But with all this truth, there emerges the inevitable–individual recycling–the distilling of the truth, when it passes through and simmers in the personal Psyche. And that distilled wisdom, via truth and personal experience, equals point of view–Intuition personified.

I am happy to finally know that what I write has a name, but am also quite confident that what I write, although categorized, wont feel like what anyone else has to say.

In your blog post you asked for comments on critique groups. I have been active in several and co-founded three, one in CompuServe’s original writers’ roundtable, and two in-person groups. I formed my current group here in Iowa when my family and I moved from Seattle and I couldn’t find one that met my needs; one group at a large bookstore chain attracted too many people so our work would be read in rotation only once every quarter, another group specialized in romance-only writing, and another group turned out to be more social and less critique, not a working writers’ group. So, I started my own.

I appreciate and need the “fresh eyes” of other working writers. And our group not only critiques each others’ work, but I bring market news each month to our members and I encourage them to do the same. We also share publishing successes at the beginning of our meeting and it’s gratifying to see something in print that we helped a fellow writer polish. The group has been active since 2002, with members who have come and gone, growing to as many as 12 (too many, actually, for same-night critiquing), to our now comfortable and stable group of 6.

I also co-founded a Seattle-area group during the 1990s with friend and fellow writer Shannon Woodward, and it, too, ended up with six members. That one operated differently, in that we emailed or brought pieces to be critiqued a month in advance (a policy I tend to prefer because of the depth of attention and resultant feedback I can give someone’s writing). My group here in Iowa prefers bringing work to the meeting the same night, so I’ve adapted. We take an hour to read followed by an hour to discuss feedback. It works for us.

As for meeting places, the Seattle group rotated between members’ homes, while my Iowa group meets at a local Panera’s cafe, making use of the free conference room. We used to meet in the public library until last year’s massive Iowa flood destroyed the main library, pushing groups who needed conference rooms to the other two smaller libraries in our area–scheduling became impossible, so we moved to the cafe.

In addition, I have been subject to the “Iowa workshop” experience, having participated in two semesters offered to undergrad students, the “Creative Writing Workshop” and the recently revived “Writers’ Workshop, Fiction for Undergraduates” (my submitted story won me a spot during my final semester as an undergrad). The biggest adjustment I found I had to make was that many of my classmates critiqued from personal preference or idiosyncrasies, rather than trying to make the pieces the “best” they could be, to realize their full potential. There was also some showing off going on, or writing for shock value rather than writing something of value. I’m still grateful for the experience and the challenge to produce some interesting new projects generated from those classes, but I also value the feedback from my writing friends who may not have an MFA, but who successfully write for publication, or who bring insight from their life experience in their feedback to bear on my own projects.

Thanks again for sharing your time and expertise with us writers in the graduate class as well as online, Lee. It’s a pleasure to meet you and benefit from your experience.

Ours were more about putting work out there than the nuts and bolts of the prose (that was MMU in England)
x

Remember, any and all peers are simply back seat drivers…you can choose to listen to them as they point their fingers…or not, ironically, I learned that in a graduate school workshop.