Writing Group

[sraun]

My darling wife, iraunink, is asking for input on writing groups in a post here. This is her second writing group - her first experience with one was, to put it frankly, awful.

I think part of the problem was that the first group could not distinguish between 'I like this', 'this works', and 'this is done well'.

Comments

[sraun]

Oh, I agree about picking the right people in the first place! And the group she was in was not the right group of people, at least for her. I don't know how they're doing - I do know that one of the guys did the Writer's Workship at Minicon last year.

[joelrosenberg.livejournal.com]

Yup. And you made something explicit that I should have: "right", in this context, means "right for this particular person", not "one of the Elect" (or, at least, not necessarily one of the Elect . . . ).

There's lots of very good writers I wouldn't workshop with, but if I were putting together a workshop again (and, who knows, I may at some point, although I think the first readers thing is working better for me, lazy guy that I am), writing ability would, once again, be a small factor (even though the group that I did put together had fine writers in it, and got more).

Which does, by the way, lead to a notion -- maybe what a given person needs isn't necssarily a workshop, but one or more first readers.