In my piece, suddenly the voice of a psychopathic sixteen year old boy took over, who has just skinned a cat, and would like to skin girls some day. Ouch.
For the past few weeks, I have been writing once a week with a small group. It has been a great creative experience, as everyone turns up with writing ideas, prompts. What we have basically done so far is timed writing, and it has thrown up some interesting results. It is always fascinating to see how based on the same prompt, different people come up with radically different stories!
Today, one of the word prompts was Skin, and we had everything from an artist painting his masterpiece on a woman’s body, to a pregnant girl being massaged by her mother for relief. In my piece, suddenly the voice of a psychopathic sixteen-year-old boy took over, who has just skinned a cat, and would like to skin girls some day. Ouch.
But the point is that I’ve discovered that group writing without exchanging critiques can be quite a pleasant experience, and very helpful. It is very stress-free and people give and receive advice or share problems. Exactly what I would look for in a group of writing friends. We plan to introduce critiquing, but gently, and only for those who want it.
Any of our readers have an experience with writing groups?
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Critique groups can be great if you have at least a few writers with similar genres and experience levels.
I was in one once where all the other writers were self-pubbed and no writers anywhere near my genre. The result? Besides a few opinions on the basics, no one knew what to say.
I was in another where the writers were just doing it as a hobby and none seemed all that serious about it as a career. The result? Everything that everyone wrote was “Awesome!”
The one I’m in now is great with honest criticisms and compliments. But we hardly meet so I suppliment my needs w’ writing buddies, blog critiques, betas.
I think critique groups can be very rewarding as long as you shop around until you find one that suits you and your work best.
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By Annarkie on 12.02.09 11:22 pm | Permalink
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