Any advice on running a writers' group?

Cafe Society
1

In the wake of November’s NaNoWriMo, I found myself championing the idea of establishing a permanent writers’ group here in Tucson.

I put some time into setting it up, and now we have a regular meeting room in a local bookstore, a message board, a mailing list, and (most importantly) about a dozen devoted members.

So now I find myself in the position of moderator/organizer/de facto leader of this highly creative band of people. And I have no clue what to do.

We’ve determined that we’re going to be helping each other out by critiquing each others’ work, and have come up with some good guidelines on critiquing as well. Some people are still finishing up novels, others are working on other projects.

Has anyone run anything like this before? Any suggestions on making sure it stays productive and fun? Any anecdotes of writers’ groups long past that you remember fondly?

2

I don’t personally run one, but I occasionally participate in one started by a close friend.

Nexus is run twice monthly, and focuses on writing science fiction short stories with the intent of being published professionally. Its members range from unpublished amateurs to novelists with literally dozens of novels under their belt.

Each meeting, we usually critique 2 or 3 stories, and spend some time discussing current issues relating to writers and publishing. Critiques are done in the Clarion style, where a one-minute timelimit is strictly enforced. All critiques are delivered as monologues, with no response from the author allowed until after the crititiques are over. All discussion is limited to the story presented, with no references to past stories permitted.

Some weeks are also used for doing short-shorts, where we read and critique in the same night, as opposed to taking home storries for the next meeting. This also presents a good time for newcomers to get acquainted with how everything works.

I think an important thing to keep in mind is how brutally honest it can get, and in fact should get. If your goal is to be published, then you must get the input of someone that has done publishing in the past, because the culling process is incredibly harsh. If you can’t handle that, you shouldn’t waste your time. Write for fun instead, which is different. IOW, if the first page (paragraph, line) don’t grab and hold the reader, then an editor will never get to the end.

Along with the brutality, though, it’s important to keep in mind that it is only the work being criticized and not the author. Obvious, yes, but it gets forgotten and will cause the implosion of a workshop.

Here is the URL for the group. It may provide some ideas for you.
http://www.open.org/~swc/nexus/

–
Justin

3

I’m a professional writer at the moment. I’ve never been in a writer’s group, except for college classes.

I avoid them for two reasons, either of which may be of use to you in structuring something worthwhile:

  1. The comments, especially once the group gets to know one another, are far too polite to be of use. One time, I purposely added a paragraph for a particular person – sure enough, they picked it out as their favorite. At that point I realized I didn’t need their (live) opinion anymore.

  2. Stephen King (who I admire as a professional, though I dislike his work) recommended in his book “On Writing” that writers not join workshops. I don’t remember all his reasons, but I believe they boiled down to: Real writers don’t need pseudo-writers telling them what to do.

That may be a little difficult to work with, but it suggests that drilling down on quality and honest criticism is the way to attract more serious and experienced writers.

It also suggests a general, gentle goal for less experienced writers.

4

It all depends on the group. I started one back in the 80s; about three or four of the regulars got published; my novel was read to the group and their comments were very helpfulin getting it published. There were also groups like Turkey City (the birthplace of cyberpunk), and a couple of successful ones in New Haven (Esther Friesner, Joel Rosenberg, Mark McGarry, and Kenneth O’Donnell) and Minneapolis. Right now, Critters.org seems to be a useful site, and, of course, there’s Clarion, but that’s a little different.

You have to do two things: be honest in your criticism, and learn to criticize the story and not the author. (I find the best way to preface any negative comments is to start, "I have a problem with … "). If there’s something good, be sure to mention it, and if there’s something that doesn’t work (note that phrasing; it’s better than saying something is bad), give a suggestion on how it can be made better (saying, “this sucks” does help the author and only makes him mad). In other words, diplomacy is a key.

However, don’t be afraid to say what you think is wrong with a story. If people aren’t willing to take criticism, they shouldn’t be in a writing group.

5

I’ll just share some random memories:

I’ve been in two writers’ groups. One was somewhat helpful until it became so brutal and personal that the whole thing unraveled and I had to put it out of its misery.

The next one lasted a long time and was better. We often brought copies of our stories and would ask another person to read our work out loud while the others would follow along, and everyone could write comments on the copies if they wished.
Our problems, though, were that we lost too many longtime members for various reasons and didn’t pick up many new ones; we had to move from a library to a hospital and then to a very noisy bookstore that was not conducive to our work; it was the same four people meeting every time and I wasn’t getting much out of it. I discovered later that three of us were only going because we felt an obligation to one another. So I mercy-killed that one too, and we split the dues money and I closed out the account.

Wow, that’s depressing to read…But I’m much better off now, emailing a trusted friend with new stories of mine to critique. (She used to go to the club.)

Be aware that if you invite guests, there may be some truly awful work and some unpleasant personalities. Also, you may wind up doing all the work, like I did with mine: calling, coordinating, publicizing, running the meetings, collecting dues, getting refreshments, etc. I hope you can delegate and take off some of the pressure.

If it ever gets to the point where you feel like it’s just not working, get out. You’ll know when.

Good luck.

6

First, Stephen King is right… for Stephen King. He may or may not be right for others. He certainly isn’t right for me. (As for the comments becoming too polite over time… well, never in any group I’ve seen.)

I’ve been in a couple of long lasting writers groups, and several of us just started a new one. There are numerous benefits of such groups and several pitfalls. These will be different for each person and you can only learn by experience which are which for you.

For non-professional writers, these groups can be extremely useful. They provide incentive to write, along with a structure and deadline pressures, and then there is always the warm glow of being with others with similar interests. If the purpose of the group is to develop professionals, then a group can kick a lot of the nonsense out a person very quickly. If there are professionals in the group, a good deal of critical information can be imparted, from proper manuscript structure to proper use of gerunds. You can’t teach creativity just as you can’t teach somebody to be a race car driver. But a driver’s ed course can be a lifesaver, and certainly will get you to function with minimal competence behind the wheel much faster than going it alone.

Interestingly, much of this is also true for professionals in a group. Writers can be solitary and lonely and meeting with others regularly is attractive to a great many writers. Having others look at your manuscripts with a fresh eye, getting an early opinion on whether an experiment is working, or enlisting others to get past a roadblock is useful even for pros.

Pitfalls are many and varied, to be sure. Getting the right mix of personalities is tricky and seldom attained. Over time you should learn who is going to be so positive as to be useless and who is going to be so negative as to be useless, but that is time thoroughly wasted. Most groups deal with only one type of fiction - few people are knowledgeable enough about several genres to critique them all, and even fewer know the professional requirements of more than one genre (and mainstream is a genre). One poisonous personality can kill a whole group. A group with too many non-pros may not understand enough to give any useful feedback; a group with only one pro may become dependent on that person and write to that style in hopes of getting good praise. Dealing with novels is always tricky: few people are willing to critique a whole novel, but anything less is hard to work with since so much of criticism requires a knowledge of the whole.

JSexton seems to be doing well in creating a culture for his group. Each group that lasts develops its own personality and its own rules and exceptions. One warning, though: He mentions Clarion (a long-standing summer program for aspiring science fiction writers). Bear in mind that Clarion critiques are traditionally much harder and more negative than are good for long-term friendships. All of us want positive feedback. Understanding what is right about a story and being able to articulate something more than “this is good” is a skill more valuable than merely being able to criticize.

Just start with reading one another’s manuscripts and find out for yourselves exactly how well you understand what works and what doesn’t about the stories and why. This is much, much harder than it appears at first. Critiquing is a skill like any other. Some people (and some professionals) are much better at it than others. Give the group some time to create a personality, and work out tentative rules by mutual consent, modifying them when you have some experience. The people, the format, the number of times you meet, the type of stories you critique – all may have to change over time for the group to be successful. It may not be. If so, you’ll learn for your next group. Most of us are serial groupers if the first one works.

Clarion West 1972

7

Writing groups don’t work for a number of reasons:

  1. People are selfish. They miss deadlines because they don’t care about the group. They throw everyone off schedule because they couldn’t follow the rules.

  2. People are selfish. Instead of missing deadlines, they come in week after week after week with a brand new story and they can’t wait three more weeks for their turn. Read it now!

  3. People are selfish. They don’t constructively critique your story. They do a minimal amount of effort in giving you any sort of feedback yet they want you to have read word for word their piece and written out a term paper on it like it was the next JD Salinger novel.

  4. People are selfish. They dismiss your comments because you clearly aren’t the writer they are and so your opinions couldn’t possibly be substantial or insightful.

You seeing a pattern? I’m not saying writing workshops don’t work. I’m saying that you need a group of people all working in the same genre, all at the same skill level, all willing to work for the good of the group because everyone’s pieces are all equally important. Find that and you’ve got a great group.
Good luck finding them.

8

Well, I thank you all for your kind advice.

Now I know what I have to look forward to. This will be the best experience of my writing career, and the most dismal bog of despair I’ve ever encountered. I’ll become a more professional, more accomplished writer and wish I’d never learned to write at all. It will accomplish nothing, except that I may get published.

I can accept that. I figure I’ll try it out, and see how it goes. The links that you provided were very helpful. I’m curious; did the successful writers’ groups have strong leaders, or were they more of a democracy?