Book Club Newbie

I don't know how common it is for people in general (and writers in particular) to join a book club, but I'd heard about them from the other women in Writeous Writers, so I thought I'd give it a try.

For my first meeting, we read Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See. I wrote a glowing review of the book when I first finished it, and in my mind's eye I pictured that at the book group we'd all speak appreciatively about how much we loved it and everything about Lisa See.

That's not exactly how things turned out. Right off the bat, the other members launched into passionate, intelligent discussion about the novel. Some people loved the book; others, not so much. At points the debates became heated. Throughout the meeting, the people in the book club worked hard to deepen their understanding of a passion which they all shared. I left the meeting feeling a little overwhelmed, but also with a great deal more insight than I'd had at the start.

Now that I'm working on making my living as a published author, I realize that I need to look more deeply into books to find the reasons why I like or dislike them. And even more important than that, I need to find out why other people like or dislike the books they read. The book club will definitely help with that.

Join a book club today! I joined mine through my local library; here's a list of libraries in the U.S. if you're looking for one near you.

Comparison Of Online Short Story Critique Sites

I'm looking for some people to critique my short stories. I have my writer's group, Writeous Writers, but I don't want to overload them with critiquing both my novel and my stories (we meet once a month, and I hope to have three stories done within a month). Since we have this fancy 'internet' thing nowadays, I thought I'd look online for critique groups and skip the hard part of finding like-minded writers in person. Here are my impressions of some of the groups I've come across. These sites are ranked from most to least helpful for providing short story critiques.

Scribophile

Okay, my first impression of this site was somewhat negative, due to difficulties navigating and sacrifice of functionality for Adwords (some of the ads are actually disguised to look like navigation links). However, the users are friendly (after one day as a member, I've already received two welcomes!) and it looks like the site is pretty heavily used. I'm in serious need of critiques for my work, so perhaps I'll get over the ads and this site will prove useful to me. I'll keep you posted.

Critique Groups for Writers

This is one of the first sites I looked at. It appears to focus more on book critiques than short story critiques. I wasn't sure what sort of a group I should join, as my short stories don't fall into one set genre. Also, navigation is somewhat clumsy.

Short Story Writers

This critique group seems to have been closed for a couple of years now, although I'm still finding references to it across the web. Latest update as of 4/16/2006. It still has some useful information for writers, however.

Writesville

Another defunct site, last updated in 2006. Again, some useful information, but I couldn't find anything resembling a critique group.

Last but not least, How To Critique Fiction is not a critique group, but does offer good information for how to go about critiquing someone's work.

Second Meeting of the Writeous Writers

Okay, it's about time I posted about the second meeting of my new writer's group, Writeous Writers. Once again, I met with amazing women, ate some amazing food, and learned some amazing things.

Suzy, who is new to the group since last month, is working on a non-fiction book about making workers more productive. I think she's got a great shot at it, because she already has regular speaking engagements presenting material similar to what she plans to put in the book, which will form an important part of her marketing plan. She gave us some great information about formatting non-fiction submissions for publication: note that the process can be very different from submitting fiction, so make sure that you have the right information. Dee brought in a short story (yay for rounding out our genre count!), and we worked more on novel manuscripts by Michille and myself. I was glad to hear that my critiquers approved of the brief poems I've included in my manuscript. I love the way that Tolkien incorporates poetry and song into his works, but I know that those forms can be very hit or miss, so I guess I'll just have to wait and see with those.

Next month we're going to have a quick session about websites before we get into the critiquing. Remember, a website is a great way to promote your work, and Weebly is a great way to set up your website!

Writeous Writers Unite!

Last Thursday was the first meeting of my new writer's critique group, Writeous Writers. Born out of a class taught by Karen Syed last year, our group meets monthly to hone our craft and whet the stones of our imaginations.

The meeting was a huge success! In fact, it was so successful that I'm already building a website for our group. By the way, Weebly and GoDaddy make an excellent, inexpenisive, easy to figure out solution for creating and hosting a simple website. And all you writers out there know that from the day you first start writing you should have a website, right? Your success will come much more easily if people already know about you before you start submitting manuscripts.

Random Word Generator and Writeous Writers

So I figured since I haven't posted in a while, I should get something up here. I couldn't think of anything, so I turned to a handy Random Word Generator. And guess what - my word was Character! Very fitting, don't you think?

Getting to the essence of a character can be tricky. I haven't known my characters for very long. I find myself putting them in situations where I'm not quite sure how they'll react, and I just have to figure something out. I think that the best way to develop characters is the same way you'd get to know a friend. You start out slow, you ask a few questions, you hang out together, maybe have a misunderstanding or two, but (hopefully) you eventually feel like you understand the other person. Of course, then they throw something completely different at you, and you have to shift your view; but that's what makes friendship, and reading, interesting.

I just remembered one other thing I wanted to mention: I'm starting a writer's group! One of the new members suggested the name Writeous Writers, and I love it. If things go well, I'll set up a website, and perhaps get it listed on the Maryland Writer's Association site. I'm excited. It seems like this is a critique style that will work for me. I've tried subscribing to discussion groups on the web, but they often just deteriorate into flame wars and endless promotions. Hopefully this way I'll spend more time working on my writing, and less time deleting emails.