Lies They Tell Writers, Part 6: Join a Critique Group—and Be Positive!

You’ve already endured my rant on why I’m not a member of a critique group. Brace yourself for the follow-up: why no critique group would want me.

It has to do with social graces. When moved to speak my mind, I have a hard time resisting saying what’s on my mind. No euphemisms. No ambiguity. Nothing cryptic. While I never intend to be unkind, it sometimes comes out that way. Most writers don’t want to hear it.

Then there’s the fact that I am irresistibly drawn to the negative end of the magnetic field. Whenever I look at a piece of writing, whether my own or someone else’s, the first question I ask is, “What’s wrong with this?” I automatically look for what’s wrong, I find it, and I fix it. It has been part of my advertising job for years, and it spills over into poems, novels, short stories, nonfiction, essays, magazine articles and any other string of words I encounter. Again, that holds true for my own words as well as someone else’s.

Here’s why. What’s written well doesn’t require attention or comment. It’s supposed to be well written. Fawning over it or heaping praise on writers for doing what is expected seems to me akin to congratulating them on remembering to inhale and exhale in the proper sequence. So, in the interest of better writing, I zero in on what’s wrong and why.     

On the other hand, if you can’t say something nice….

Maybe I should just shut up. Or stay away from critique groups. 

Lies They Tell Writers, Part 5: Join a Critique Group

Early on in my attempt to become a writer of something besides advertising copy, I heard a lot about the importance of joining a critique group. You know, where you sit around with a bunch of other writers and read what you’ve written and talk about it. Theoretically, others will point out problems with your work that you can’t see because you’re too close to it. They might even tell you how to fix it.

But opinions differ. 

The person sitting across from you might have an altogether different idea than the person sitting next to you. Not only different, even contradictory. Someone else may offer yet another conflicting opinion and more contrary advice.

It’s all very confusing to me—too confusing.

What to do? Who do you believe? What advice do you take and what do you ignore? If you have any faith at all in you’ve written, I suspect you would disregard it all and go with your gut. And, at that point, what’s the point?

Besides, who’s to say these people know any more than you do?

I suppose you could trace my dislike for such things to my years in advertising, where you must listen to clients (and others) comment on your work, then try to incorporate their often absurd notions into your ideas and copy. Having lived with that for decades, maybe I just enjoy going my own way, not having to explain or answer to anybody. Except, of course, editors and publishers who are paying for their opinions.

Some people swear by critique groups. One friend, in particular, insists it makes him a much better writer. But as for me, I would rather spend my time writing than talking about writing.

Lies They Tell Writers, Part Two: Develop a Routine.

Set aside a time, a place, a situation for writing. Immerse yourself in the appropriate milieu for motivation. It might be a certain style of background music, or maybe it’s silence. Brightly lit, perhaps, or softly illuminated. Have your favorite thesaurus at hand, and align the proper number of freshly sharpened number two pencils. But whatever you do, however you do it, you must—must—create an environment that turns your attention inward and focuses your concentration on your art; an ambience that filters out distractions and informs your mind and body that it’s time to write.

That’s the kind of thing I've heard over and over again about how to write.

It might work for some. Maybe. But why limit your ability, your opportunities, to write to a certain confined situation? Why not write anywhere, anytime?

I have written while all by myself and when surrounded by family. In private and in public. At desks and at kitchen tables. Indoors and outside. In offices and airports and hotel rooms. On a computer. A notepad. A scrap of paper. With and without music and while sitting in front of the TV or listening to the radio. In bed, on the couch, on the porch, at the library, in restaurants, on the bus.

If I’ve spent any time there, chances are I’ve written something there.

Manufactured surroundings and invented schedules might sound like an effective way to free yourself to write. On the other hand, such machinations may prove so confining, so restrictive, they smother the muse. It might work for some. It may even work for you. But, despite what proponents of predictability preach, it ain’t necessarily so.

Instead, write. Just write. Wherever and whenever the opportunity arises.

The words don’t care.

Lies They Tell Writers, Part 1: Write What You Know.

You hear it all the time at writer’s workshops: write what you know.

I don’t believe a word of it. Writing about what you know about seems to me a recipe for repetition and stagnation.

 Instead, write what you want to know. The best writers are inherently curious, always seeking—through reading or travel or whatever—to learn something new. You could call it research. And those new things, whether sought out deliberately or stumbled upon by serendipity, often find their way into a story, a song, a poem, or a book—usually after considerably more research and curiosity.

Now, this is not to say you shouldn’t develop some mastery of the subject—know it, in other words—before you write about it. For one thing, readers who do know can spot a phony from afar. For another, writers owe readers a heaping helping of honesty, truth, and reality along with entertainment. And that’s true whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction, poetry or plays, essays or songs, movies or magazine articles.

Texas poet Larry D. Thomas would never have imagined The Goatherd had he not been curious about what life might have been like for a man who tended goats in long-ago Texas. Michael Zimmer would not have written the outstanding novel Beneath a Hunter’s Moon had he not wondered about the somewhat obscure Métis and their ways. We would not have South Pass had Will Bagley not set out to discover the finer points of exploration and emigrant travel over the Continental Divide’s easiest crossing. And so on.

Don’t let your writing be limited by the limits of your knowledge by believing the lie that you should write what you know. Learn something new. Then, you’ll come to know what you write—and so will your readers.