How NOT to behave in a writing group

When I first thought of writing about writing groups and workshops, I was going to gush about how well the current group is going and how much great feedback I've gotten from it. I've been sharing my latest novel with the group since January and have gotten invaluble assistance and insights.

Then I recalled my other in-person writing group experiences. My first was very positive, and I made some lasting friends. Well, at least one. However, I was seeking a deeper level of criticism than this group could provide to help me grow as a writer.

So, I ditched the group I was in at the time and searched for a *gasp * new one. And I found (drumroll, please) the writing group from the underworld.

Critiquing someone else's work isn't about burning them.

Since it's more fun to dish about something than dote on it, I decided to write about that fated writing workshop. Four years later, it still gives me the shudders today.

There are lessons to be learned from my experience. Like a caring parent, I will share them with you, so you have the chance to avoid them. Like an impudent child, you will most likely disregard them. But I'll tell you about them anyway because it's my writing blog.

How NOT to behave

Don't tell another writer that her protagonist is a twit. I like flawed characters. It gives them room to grow throughout the story. Just like on the playground, no name-calling is allowed. You can say, "I couldn't relate to your character. I'm not sure I understood the choices she made. What are you trying to achieve?" or something like that. One week after I received her scathing critique, the same chapter won a First Chapter Contest at Billboard.Net. Oh, and I got representation, too, from an agent who loved my "twit."

Don't take every scene in another writer's story and judge it based on all your emotional baggage. If you are in a writing group, endeavor to separate yourself from your critique just as writers attempt to separate themselves from the characters they create. If the character cuddles her four-year-old nephew because she loves him and doesn't have children of her own, don't write a tome about how you were molested as a child in your critique, and that her scene is sick and perverted. It's not about you.

Don't, as a fallback position, remind everyone at every opportunity during workshop that you've attended the Bread Loaf Writing Conference, and that gives you license to trash everyone else's work. When you have a conventionally published book to your credit, then you may have a prayer of a chance of winning our respect. I'm sure Bread Loaf is a wonderful program and has a roster of prestigious attendees to its credit. However, your having attended it doesn't make you better than everyone else.

There are other heinous things you could do as a writing workshop participant or facilitator. Facilitators who don't take charge and rein in the nastiness shouldn't be surprised when the group falls apart.

How about you? Any workshop horror stories to relate? Success stories are welcome, too.

Tooth and fang great for Halloween--not for writers

Thinking of baring your canines? It's that time of year, isn't it? Just don't sink your fangs into a fellow writer's work--not if you expect people to critique your writing fairly and constructively.

Tooth and fang reviewers. The bane of participating in writing workshops--face to face and online. It might just be my theory, but I think mean people behave worse, cloaked in the anonymity of cyberspace. There's something about a keyboard that brings out cool cattiness, especially in passive-aggressive types, who hide behind anonymous online identities and then slash and burn the work of others like they're leading some kind of cyber-Inquisition.

I was first introduced to this concept of "tooth and fang" critiques by Dorothea Brande in her book Becoming a Writer, who I've referred to several times on this blog in its short lifetime. It describes writers who pick out all the flaws in others' writing (because it's the work of others and not their own), and then "fall upon the work, tooth and fang," leaving the writer shaken and dazed in the process. There seems to be no end to the savagery writers will heap upon others in the name of "helping them improve."

I'm not enthusiastic about every piece of writing I'm asked or expected to read or review. Yes, it is easier to see flaws in others writing than it is one's own. But I try to at least make any criticism I give constructive.

I seem to attract tooth and fang reviewers like some people are bad boss magnets. I honestly think savage reviews say more about the brassy reviewer's mental faculties (or lack of them) than they do about the work being reviewed. In my first real face-to-face writing workshop, one of the workshoppers was cruel and idiosyncratic. I've have never encountered such a self-centered reviewer in my life. She read so much of her own life history into my book, using neither fair nor reasonable standards. The facilitators refused to rein her in, so I left the group. To this day, I shudder when I hear her name mentioned in other writing circles. Ooh, scary stuff.

On one online writing community I belonged to briefly (but not briefly enough), I posted five pages of a work in progress. You would have thought it was raw meat, and these fellow writers starving tigers. I have never been treated so badly by other writers in my life. I later realized this site was chock full of slobbering sycophants who regularly reveled in mob-shredding noobs--no policing of the site enforced. The shame of that whole experience was that my writing was good after all. Yes, it could have been improved--whose work is perfect? But not by listening to their bloodless ranting. I am ashamed to say that I pulled back from the work for two years I was so shaken by my experience on this site.

Here's what I learned from both bad experiences. Usually in any tooth and fang review, there's a bit of truth. And it's usually buried in a lot of hyperbolic drivel. It helps to remember that, as you're work is being shredded like cabbage into cole slaw, that somewhere something rings true. It's not easy to tell yourself to ignore most of the other crap and seek out the nugget of advice you can actually use, but it can be done. I compare the process to how the human digestive system works. You put a bunch of stuff into your body, it extracts the little bits it can use, but sends most of what's left to become waste material to be evacuated.

What can be done about the tooth and fang reviewers? I've given up finding a great writing workshop, which is one of the reasons I enrolled in a master's program. However, if you, like me, have found even a small network of people you trust in that program, like I did at Wilkes University, if you intend to keep writing, never let those people go. Hold onto them, nurture the relationships, because they are a precious commodity.

Next, learn to take more stock in your own writing. No one else can do that for you. Summon the wisdom and the ego strength to identify what is working about your writing and don't let anyone dissuade you from your convictions. If you don't have enough objectivity about your writing, then have the discipline to put it down for six months. Keep writing in the meantime. Then pick it up--but only after several months. See if you can't look at your work with objectivity at that point. If you're not sure your writing is working, then admit that you need more instruction, and go get it. Just don't sign up for this creative writing program, okay?