I'm Looking For A Critique Partner

Much to my dismay, my writing group dismantled last year. While I was fortunate enough to have a few of the old members read drafts of my completed manuscript for feedback, it seems we can't all get it together to make it a regular thing.

So, I find myself in search of a critique partner. My search begins here. I'm asking all of you lovely people to help me out. Let me know if you are interested or if you know someone who may be interested. Tweet it, blog it, whatever you like.

Here's a little bit of what I write and what I'm looking for:

I write women's fiction. I read everything, but this is what I read obsessively: women's fiction, literary fiction, and contemporary young adult literature. I'm afraid you won't find me very helpful if you write genre fiction or middle grade, but I do spend 40 hours a week writing for pre-schoolers so, yeah, there's that. I am very focused on writing for and about women and or teenage girls. It's just the kind of character and audience I know and understand best.

I would love to work with someone who writes literary or contemporary fiction, either adult or young adult. We can work online, skyping, e-mailing, morse code, whatever works best.

I'm open to working with a small group. Probably no more than 3 or 4, just to be positive that we can devote the attention to one another's work.

I hope this isn't overload of information but I just wanted to get it out there. So, please, please, please, will you be my writer friend? (Well, most of you are already my writer friends, but let's take this relationship to the next level) Or will you pass it along to your writer friends? Thank you!

Comment here or e-mail me at thistooblog (at) gmail (dot) com

Update

I figure I owe you all an update on what's been going on with my manuscript.

1. Spared is still the working title of the novel. It's stuck around the longest of any title so far and I don't even have room left in my brain to wonder about it anymore. So that's it! For now.

2. I am on the 200th revision of my query letter. I think it's looking pretty good. I have a PR guru willing to look at it. I guess we'll see if the pitch is punchy enough for the publicity peeps.

3. I've received 2nd-hand, quick, more-to-come feedback from a beta reader who said simply: "I love it. I love her style and 'turns of phrases'". That's always good to hear. Especially when the reader is a published writer. (After hearing this, I immediately reverted to middle school and asked, did she say 'like'. Or 'love'? Are you sure it was 'love'? 'Cause there's a big difference between 'like' and 'love', ya know. I was assured it was 'love', but I still don't believe we're going to the dance.)

4. I've also received more in-depth feedback from a beta reader that provided me with A LOT of valuable insight for my next edit.

5. It's in the hands of 2 more readers from my original writing group who were with this thing from the very beginning, when it was in absolute shambles.

6. I'm working on line editing what I have, knowing there may be some additional chapters and re-worked chapters from the incoming feedback. I already have a lot to think about regarding some of the pacing and plot points that need to be fleshed out more. Or the ones that need to take a step back.

7. That's about it on the novel front.

8. In other news: On Thursday I will meet Ann M. Martin, author of the Babysitter's Club series, and consequently die a happy woman.

Surprise Query Critique

The week that I unplugged, I was the recipient (i.e. victim) of a surprise query critique (i.e. query killing).

A few weeks ago a literary agency was accepting queries for critique and agreed to post the critiques of 7 lucky queries on their blog. I entered the contest on a whim, sent my query out and a week or two later, I was surprised to read the blog and find that my poor, little query was featured!

I nearly hid under a desk.

All I can say is thank goodness it was anonymous. I'm not going to direct you to the post because I'm still embarrassed. But I will give you some query tips:

1. Don't have an awkward opening! My sentences were too wordy. Keep it short and attention grabbing.

2. Sell your character! Not just your plot! The letter did not share enough information about who my character is. I was all wrapped up in selling my plot, I didn't share enough about the person behind it.

3. Make exciting plot points...exciting! Apparently, my plot was considered dynamic, but the telling of it was flat and boring. Use dynamic sentences to explain dynamic adventures.

4. Don't bury your character's psychological struggle! I would imagine this is only relevant if you have a character-driven novel (as I do). Any trauma or struggle he or she may need to overcome should be highlighted upfront.

5. Don't capitalize genres! It's women's fiction. Not Women's Fiction. (Apparently I missed that grammar lesson)

6. Mention your word count! This is apparently the only thing I did right...

7. Mention if it's your first novel! Oh wait, I got that one right too. As if it wasn't painfully obvious based on my pathetic, sickly query.

I'm sorry about all the exclamation points. But, with the amount of agency blogs I read, I'm at the point where I feel every agent is yelling at me. I know they aren't. I imagine that they are really good people. Good people who read a lot of crap. So I don't blame them if they get ornery about the things they receive in their slush piles.

I feel fortunate that I got this query critiqued before I sent it out. They confirmed what I had long suspected: my manuscript would have been rejected. But guess what? It wasn't real! I have another shot! So, the experience is ridiculously valuable. Ridiculously. I told you that was my crutch word (no, I didn't use it in my query).

I urge all of you to try and enter these kinds of contests. I will try and post more of them here.

Handing it Over

Good news! I finished the first edit of my novel! It wasn't as dreadful of a process as I thought it would be and I think my manuscript is in a much, much better place. And I discovered something about myself that was a bit of a surprise: I like to cut things. I was like an animal, slicing and dicing. I got rid of one of my favorite scenes in the whole novel because I found out it just didn't serve a good enough purpose. And I actually thought it was fun to select all and press delete (of course I have a cut file so it wasn't like it was gone forever).

Now, as they say, when you love something, set it free. Love is probably not the correct word but at this point, I'm so brain dead it's the only cliche I can think of. So I'm about to send out the book to some fresh eyes for critique before I begin querying agents.

I workshopped the first 150 pages of my novel, but I stopped at that point for a variety of reasons. My formal workshop simply ended its run and my writing group sadly fizzled after the honeymoon wore off and a few attempts to meet up failed. I did not actively try and keep these connections because my workshops and critique groups were taking up a lot of my writing time. There was a point where I was involved in about 25 other people's novels and I basically got workshop burnout. It's unfortunate, because I lost most of the valuable connections I had made with other writers. If I had to do it over again I probably would have tried to stick to 1 or 2 critique partners so that writing and critiquing could be of equal priority.

I have a few writers who are willing to read my work so I'm grateful for that, but I'm thinking I'd like to reconnect with some of the writer friends I've since lost. After all, they were there from the beginning of this silly little thing. I wonder if some of them would like to pick up where we left off.

We shall see...

In the meantime, I wonder what other people will see in my novel that I simply couldn't. After all, this whole 'I write, you read' thang is truly what it's all about, right? Heeeeere weeeeee gooooooooo!!!!!!

That'll Do

Ever since I began workshopping my writing last October, I've gotten into a situation where everything I read is up for critique. I also have a job where most of my day is spent with people reviewing my work and me reviewing others'. This means that, not only do I critique my peers' works in progress, but that every time I read a published novel, I am looking for things that are wrong with it. I am looking for reasons to sulk and ask, Why are they published and I'm not?

Well, excuse me for a moment while I have an inner dialogue with myself:
Melissa, you're not published because you don't have a finished novel yet. You can't publish an unfinished novel unless you're famous, dead and have some kind of 'estate'. Which would you prefer? Unfinished, unpublished, and alive? Or unfinished, published, and dead? Don't answer that.

Sorry about that.

It got me to thinking about why I'm the first person to jump up in a workshop and say (more or less): "I liked your novel because of all of the positive things everyone else just said, but here's my list of grievances" and proceed to run around the room screaming 'no taxation without representation!' and a list of 30 or so other problems. This is a bit of an exaggeration but, the point is, I don't always like telling folks what they done good.

But the thing is, I don't like folks telling me what I done good. I want other writers to be better and I want to be a better writer. I don't need someone petting and massaging my ego when I'm trying to do something as difficult as writing a novel.

I asked myself, what is the value of telling people that they did well? And, uh, when I put it that way, I had to slap myself.

I am fortunate to have grown up around a supportive community of people, who rewarded me and encouraged me when I did something well. I surround myself around people who appreciate and love me to this day. And I know not everyone is as fortunate I am.

So, now that I am in a community of writers, whether they be struggling newbies like me or veterans like the writers of the novels I read, I really should give back a little of the love.

Of course it's important to know what you did well. If no one ever told you, you wouldn't be doing it in the first place!

So I hope that the next time I'm in a workshop, or I finish a novel, or I enter a meeting or a review at work, I'll remember to look for and understand what's good about what we're discussing. Because there's plenty of time to dissect the bad.

It reminds me of Farmer Hoggett in that lovely movie Babe, who always remembered to praise his little friend with the simple words: "That'll do, Pig."