Growing Pains—When It's Time to Leave a Crit Group

 

In every crit group, there comes a time to call it a day.

 

A critique group is a gathering of writers with the intent of exchanging constructive criticism of each other’s work. Gertrude Stein’s famous Parisian salon was a jumped-up critique group where Ezra Pound issued blue-pen markups on Hemingway and Dos Passos’ novels. Size, scope, and terms may vary but the groups have remained pretty-much unchanged for 100 years. 

 

That is both a benefit and a failing.

 

“In order to write well, you have to write badly,” William Faulkner

 

What healthy crit group does well is offer the writer a safe space to be bad at writing. After attempting half-a-dozen novels over ten years, I found my stride and completed my first finished effort in about six months. Don’t judge, it takes time when you have to phoneticize “Wed-nes-day,” each time you write it. Jokes aside, I knew my book wasn’t “done” or even remotely publication-ready.

 

Know your room

 

A writing professor referred me to the Inprint Writers Workshop. Inprint represents the upper-end of the crit-group pool. They charge a fee, (then $375) for a ten-week workshop of ten writers and a published/accomplished writing coach to guide all efforts. Out of ten writers, four of us were serious. Out of four who were serious only two had the maturity and developed skill to generate publishable work. Was I one of the two? Hardly, I was the chimpanzee typing dirty words and giggling to myself.

 

I should have held out and looked further. If my skin were a little thinner or my ego a bit more fragile, this would’ve probably been the end of my writing endeavors.

 

The pros of a crit-group

 

However, even in that room, the benefits were immediate. While everyone else fumbled with their insecurities, I seized the opportunity to read my work first. The upside is I survived near-terminal embarrassment and learned “word economy” especially as the term applies to “was,” “had,” and “like,” that very night.

 

What I lack in talent, I make up for in annoying tenacity

 

Remember that thin-skin thingy? Yeah, my fellow crit-group (critters?) members had MUCH thinner skin than I did. Ten weeks and ten participants should have meant that each person got a chance to read once. Instead people saw/heard the critiques of my pages and they got real squeamish and then people got ghost. By week four, we were down to six people. Only three of the other people read. This benefitted me and another guy as we got to read three times each. So, I also learned the importance of “stick,” as in “stick with it.”

 

Next level…

 

At the end of Inprint, there was no question of whether it was time to leave or not. After ten weeks, they locked the door. Of course Inprint did offer a new crit group  every ten weeks. But, as much as I benefited from the group, I was also a new college grad working two jobs to make my mortgage and student loan payments. Four-bills for another workshop was not an option for me.

 

I found my people…sorta…

 

Soon after Inprint, I discovered the Houston Writers Guild. While Inprint’s highly structured focus is primarily literary, HWG is wide open. It is also the most common type of crit-group: open-ended with members coming and going, open to (almost) all writing levels, and best of all, cheap, bordering on free.

 

Defense of work? If you have to defend it, it doesn’t work…

 

My writing improved exponentially through exposure to writers much further along in their journey as well as offering my encouragement to writers a step or two behind me. More than just touchy-feely attention, HWG provided concrete benefit. The guiding rule was “no defense of work”. Which I latched onto as a writing mantra. If you have to defend it, (scene, character, plot, etc.) it doesn’t work.

 

HWG also provided a very specific benefit to me as a white dude who strives for inclusion in fiction. 

As I have previously stated, I attempted to write a person of color speaking in a regional dialect. The scene/character was a hit with everyone in the crit group…except the one person of color in the group who offered a written four-word critique, “exploitive, diminishes the scene.”

 

I excised all dialect from my writing from that night on.

 

The cons of a crit group

 

Of course, your results may vary. Not everyone is a fan. Texas writer Joe R. Lansdale once told me, “too many cooks ruin the soup.” With a few years (and completed works under my belt) I can see the truth in that statement. The same can apply to editors, agents, and publishers but different rant, different time. I have consistently found crit groups to be supportive, positive environments…until they’re not.

 

Well, look at the time...

 

However, no matter how good the crit group is, there comes a time to leave. Most groups are transitory with members coming and going. It’s not uncommon for a group to turn over completely every six months or so. Some of the attrition is bad fit. Some is “I wanted to talk about writing, not actually write,” and some is an epidemic of thin-skin. There are also those who drop out due to successful publication. 

Or, you know, so I’ve been told.

 

A mutual-admiration-and-or-self-congratulation society, aka “a circle jerk,” is always a risk in any creative group. I saw this in a piece shared by a writer working in a crit group of teachers. Less a critique body and more a social support/drinking club, no one applied a critical eye or sharp assessment and the work suffered.

 

I have also seen groups go full-on “mean girls.” One or two writers, usually of higher skill, (but not always) turn a crit group into a gauntlet of discouragement and vicious feedback. The new writer that has the misfortune of starting there is highly unlikely to ever venture into another group, if they continue writing at all.

 

Far less dramatic, HWG simply no longer benefited me. My writing had plateaued and complacency (admiration/congratulation?) began to seep into the group after a HWG member published a best-selling novel. When the coach submitted a scene for critique that he would’ve eviscerated from anyone else as “not group ready”—and then petulantly defended the piece—I knew it was time to go.

 

“When you don’t like the party you don’t bad-mouth the party or the host. You thank them for inviting you and then go find your kind of party.” Dr. Dre

 

Crit group number three was a collection of HWG members determined to get our works ready for the query process with a minimum of distractions/egos. The first meeting was at a member’s house, chosen as equally inconvenient to all of us. Our host met us beer-in-hand and led us into his study, where I came face-to-face with an unsecured AR-15 (assault rifle) displayed on his bookcase. Pleading unforeseen circumstances, I left and never returned. The others went back only for the host to then get tore-down drunk while complaining of “some” writers’ egos being too big for their abilities. 

 

That’s me, “some writers..."

 

After repeated near-misses with publication, I accepted an invitation into a fourth (and my final) crit group. With only five of us, committed to schlepping fifty-and-sixty-miles each, I felt certain we would keep things professional (and sober). As with most best-laid plans, ours collapsed under the weight of unequal participation, bickering, and divisive comments, (mine chiefly among them).

 

Ultimately, the crit group has to serve a purpose. The only thing that improves your writing more than reading and writing is reading and/or submitting your writing to a supportive and critical (but not hostile) audience for constructive (not demeaning) feedback. When the group no longer hits those three purposes, it’s time to move on, either to another group or to trust in your own judgment.  

The photo at the top, "Mean Girls promotional poster" is the property of Paramount Pictures. Its use here, for educational and illustrative purposes is covered by the Fair Use Doctrine.