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Ok, well, it's not that bad. I'm pretty decent at self-editing and only getting better workshop by workshop. But we all hit that point where our manuscripts need fresh sets of eyes and minds.
A critique
group is a great thing. It’s a fantastic way to get outside eyes on your
manuscript and help you polish your work. You can find areas of weakness and
mistakes you might not have seen on your own. You learn how to better critique
others’ work. You have a ready-made support group to identify with the trials
you go through as a writer.
Despite the benefits,
I’ve decided to opt out. If I’d found a good
for me group, I might feel different. I’ve tried several, giving each
plenty of time and taking my feedback with a grain of salt. Still I choose to opt
out. I didn’t get
bad feedback (mostly—someone did tell me not to use fragments in dialogue and another said no
contractions in writing ever). No one offended me. The fact is when I submitted,
I received a virtually clean copy back. I got a few suggestions, some of it positive
feedback. While that’s great for my ego, it does nothing to polish my writing.
I ran into
two basic problems. First, I was at a different writing level than most
members. Second, the other writers didn’t write or read my genre. So what now?
The image of the solitary writer makes me laugh. IMHO, it takes a village to produce
a great book.
I tried out
Writer’s Digest Community, but ran into problematic feedback from writers
outside of the romance genre. Plus not enough writers use the site so the crits
are few. I registered
for Critique Circle but haven’t used it yet. Anyone tried it? If so, how was
it? Pros? Cons? I dabbled with
Book Country, but I have to admit it made me nervous. You don’t have to be a
registered user to view large portions of an author’s posted work. Would a
publisher have a problem with so much of your unedited manuscript openly
displayed to the public? And if you had some pretty original concepts, aren’t
you then wide-open to giving them to other writers?
I have a few
beta readers who aren’t writers but read romance, and aren't afraid to tell me when something's jacked up. For my first manuscript, I
had one fantastic critter, Sondrae Bennett, who was amazing at helping me shape
up my writing skills. If I had two or three critters as skilled, I’d be set.
Where have
you found your outside eyes? Tried any critique sites? Have a critique group
story, good, bad or ugly? How do you feel about publishers building their own
critique sites, like Book Country? Who else is game to try it out?
