Right now, I'm sitting here in the living room, a marathon of Law and Order SVU on the television. I don't know about you all, but I can't pass up a SVU marathon. But that's okay. All my Christmas shopping is done. All the gifts have been wrapped. The ones to open up Christmas afternoon with my parents are already under the tree. All the Santa Claus presents are hidden in the house, waiting for Christmas Eve.
The only thing I have to venture out for are chocolate chips for making cookies. I'll brave the 24 hour grocery store in those few hours that Christmas Procrastinators sleep. I don't like stores during Christmas. Perhaps then I'll only have to spend fifteen minutes in the line.
Penguins play tonight ... against the Capitals.
My hockey superstitions prohibit me from saying anything more about the game or the opponent.
I feel like I could write today. Heather and Destiny are going to spend the night with Becky and I suppose everyone is going to pretend that they like each other in the spirit of Christmas. Christian is spending the night with my grandparents. Joe is working, but should be home on his break in another hour if he doesn't go play soccer. At 5pm, the house will be completely empty again and I think I'll turn the television off, disconnect from the interwebs, and try to complete the Chapter Ten I've been avoiding.
I say that only because the document is currently not opened so that biting, overwhelming, painful urge to avoid writing is still at bay. We shall see how the evening goes.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
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5 comments:
You can do it! I had a scene I thought would never be written--or written correctly, at least. I'd written it about five different ways, none of which were working. I managed to do it eventually, though!
And I wanted to respond HERE to let you know about critique-group-forming, because it's sort of hit-or-miss and super-complicated and I want to set you up for success with this. This might get long, so I'll do this in a few comments! Part I:
Firstly, all of my serious crit partners are people I met online. And live outside the state of Texas (which is where I live). Of course, it's a bit scarier to meet people that way, but there are great websites like the Nanowrimo forums and the Absolute Write forums where you can find people.
Part II! (I'm sooo sorry I'm so long-winded. It's terrible.)
I think the best way to go about finding online crit partners is through the Absolute Write forums. They have a great forum called "Mentors, Beta Readers, Crit Partner" (or something like that) where you can basically post an "ad" for yourself. (I hope I'm not repeating myself...I can't remember exactly what I covered in my first comment!)
I'd put the genre and age you write in (for me, it would be YA fantasy--mostly, anyway), and whether or not you'd be interested to read genres or age level outside of your own.
I'd also put "writing" credentials, if you have any--I put my BA in English and that I'm working towards my master's in children's/YA lit, but you don't have to put anything like that if you don't want to. I wanted to attract folks of a similar writerly background just so we'd be on the same page.
Also specify whether or not your project is finished, and how you send out your work--do you send chapters as you write them? Do you wait till you've finished and polished your MS a little bit? And specify if you want a BETA READER or a CRITIQUE PARTNER. You might want to put this in your thread title, too. Some people are just willing to swap manuscripts, but don't want to stay in contact aside from giving feedback. Others want some sort of partnership--like me. I'm all about making friends and having shoulders to cry on.
Part III! (Whew. So sorry this is so long!)
The most important part of your "ad" is what you're looking for from your critique partner(s). How do you critique? Are you unforgiving? Are you more of a support crit partner? Do you want your crit partners to pat you on the shoulder, or tear you apart?
Don't be afraid to pull a Shayda and be long-winded about it, either! It's TOUGH finding a crit partner, let alone a group. I got lucky with my initial post (I did three), but when I wanted to broaden my circle, I waded through several non-matches.
This is what I settled on with my feedback style:
"I do line edits, but I don't go crazy with them. I mainly focus on things I LOVE and things I DON'T LOVE QUITE AS MUCH AS I SHOULD as a critical reader. I comment LOTS on story arc, characterization, believability (within the story's framework), and other cohesive plot-type things.
I like the same kind of approach to my work. Tell me what you like, what's not really working, and maybe what you think might work in place of those things. I find lots of small line edits kind of unhelpful, overall, because the majority of folks who have given me lots of line edits have been highlighting things about the narrative voice that they don't like, and it usually just means that we aren't a good beta/crit partner match."
OH MY GOODNESS Part VI. I bet you're thinking, "Whyyyy did I ask her how she found her crit group?" It's just so important to me! This is probably a sign I should just do a POST about this, but hey. This'll work. I want to set you up for success!
Okay, so then I'd wrap your "ad" up with something about PMing (private messaging) you if interested. And that's where you have your plan of attack. I'd swap emails (I have an ENTIRE email account set up for people I don't really know, so in case they turn out to be crazy, I'm sorta safe). I'd do a sample swap (five to ten pages of your project) and sample crit. And be upfront--I told people, "Look, if you HATE my stuff, I totally won't get offended--just let me know we aren't a good match." And vice versa. Also, if the person's critique is rude or disparaging (you think I'm kidding, but I got the absolute meanest sample crit back from this one guy), you don't want to work with them, no matter how good their advice may be.
Now, if y'all hit it off, that's fantastic! You've got yourself a crit partner! And of course, you can talk about expanding your group, or see if your new crit partner has a friend who'd like to join your group. However you'd like to do it. You can also post another "ad" on the forums specifically FOR your crit group--say you're open to new members and such.
Wow. I think that's it! I'm SO SORRY I wrote a whole novel about this! I hope it's helpful to you! In the meantime, happy Christmas!
Thank you so much for your help! I have never heard of Absolute Write so I will definitely check into it. I desperately need a crit partner so this is so helpful! Thank you again and Merry Christmas to you!
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