A Salute to Writers' Cramp

I thought today I would blog about a practical matter. Critique groups.

Mine--Writers' Cramp--has been in existence for coming on 13 years. It has morphed and changed--members came and left, moved away or stopped writing. But there was always a core membership that drove it. They, probably more than anything, deserve a lot of the credit for my career, because without The Cramp, I'd have little impetus to produce day in and day out. It's not that I wouldn't produce, but that self-imposed group deadline every two weeks drives me.

My agent is not a fan of writers' group--mine, yes, he knows it's solid. But he feels it's too easy to get into one where all everyone does is laud your work and no real, quality feedback emerges. Or everyone in it is mediocre, so even crap looks damn good.

Over the years, knowing that my group has helped me so much, people, including some other writers repped by my agent, have asked me what I thought makes a good writers' group. So here are some of the things that I think makes Writers' Cramp the fun, wonderful, and talented group it is:

1. Everyone has to write. There are groups that attract "groupies"--people who join and come and listen and critique week after week but produce nothing in a six-month period. "Work commitments," "I'm blocked," whatever. No excuses, you have to write and produce and share your work. There's an imbalance if others have to put themselves out there for criticism and you don't. (In our group, if you don't bring pages, you better bring food or wine to feed the group! Preferrably chocolate. Sometimes, I secretly delight in someone not bringing pages because I have occasionally had chocolate truffles from Godiva because of it!)
2. Determine what your group's communication style is going to be. I don't believe in going easy on anyone, but I do believe in gracious commentary. Some groups cultivate snark, and that may be fine if that's how you want to communicate, but be clear what your style is and what your group's style is. Ours is supportive--but honest.
3. Do not allow rewriting of others' work. This can be a problem if you have an overbearing personality in the group. We once tried out a woman who, if push came to shove, would have probably preserved a single sentence or less in others' work, and instead would critique or rewrite totally to what SHE thought it should be.
4. Be neither the best nor worst. By that, one person should not be so worlds above the rest of the group in experience and writing that he or she becomes the de facto "genius" (and I use this loosely), so revered that no real feedback occurs on that person's work for fear of going against him or her. Try to find other writers you admire, that you can learn from . . . all having strengths of weaknesses that equalize personalities and experiences.
5. Fine-tune your group. In every group, you will see some real strengths emerge. Off the top of my head, I know in my group there is someone who has exceptional word editing skills (and scene-cutting skills). He propels plots forward. We have someone who is a sheer genius in word choices and description and can spot a cliche from a mile off. I think I tend to be good at characterization, and genre/market. When a hole emerges in your group, a member leaves, whatever . . . be thinking of what your group needs. If you lose someone with great dialogue skills, maybe try to gravitate toward someone who brings that to the table.
6. Determine whether there can be "defense" of a work. I sometimes like to hash out scenes. "I was aiming for this, why isn't that working?" Or "I was aiming for this . . . do you think you missed that? How can I strengthen that?" whatever. In some groups, no defenses against criticisms are allowed precisely because things can devolve into nothing but debate because there are writers who take criticism personally--and therefore don't accept it at all and instead "defend" against each criticism. You need to find a middle ground that works . . .
7. Be clear about expectations with new members. Our group has had personalities that meshed and personalities that clashed. My own feeling is, like in a workplace, you need to be adult enough to look past someone's annoying tics or speech patterns or things that are irritating if they are simply personality. BUT, if on the other hand, someone joins who consistently doesn't "get" the way your group operates after a trial period, there should be some method to kindly ask him or her to leave. The best way to avoid this is to lay your cards on the table beforehand.
8. Determine some of the practicalities. Time, place, how many pages you can bring, and so on. Our group meets every two weeks. Believe it or not, I patch in as a conference call since I moved. Our max is 20 double-spaced pages, sent preferrably at least a day before (this gets "iffy" sometimes, but we're a small group and tend to accommodate same-day pages), and we try to come to the meeting having read everyone else's stuff beforehand and ready to critique. Our meetings last two hours. We're frends, but chit-chat is minimal when we're really working hard. We have five members--manageable since inevitably someone doesn't have pages one week, and we rarely bring 20. I'm happy to bring about 15.

So that's The Cramp. Anyone else? Suggestions? Comments?