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I say this simply as an introduction to my in-person writers' group, which pretty much consists of cheerleading and backpatting. Oh, and eating tasty snacks.
The thing is: we're all serious about our writing, although all of us have other stuff going on, and most of us (except for me, inflicting myself on you) have very little outlet for talking about our writing. So at our sorta-monthly meetings we talk about writing, read excerpts, and kind of encourage each other along with offering suggestions or little bits of critique or whatever.
I actually had a bit of a breakthrough last night, in a way: I accept that there are too many characters in my story, but I certainly can't be bothered to go back to scenes I wrote months ago and prune out characters just yet. It's much too easy to get bogged down in a first draft. And I've been mostly reading the early parts so far for chronological reasons, so whenever I read I get "you know, you have too many characters in that scene." Point long since taken, and I'll do something about it when I go back to do something about it. Honest. Also, my characters are all really young, so one member keeps telling me it's probably a YA novel and I keep telling her that it's fine with me if it is.
However, last night I read the first half of the scene in which Jordy meets Mrs. Goodnight, after which one member remarked that she still thinks there are too many names floating around. (I finally pointed out that at least a little bit of the problem is that the group is hearing about two pages worth every couple of months--there are too many characters, but more context would help.)
However, after we agreed that I'll look after editing that sort of thing once I get this draft done, pretty well everyone remarked that they like the perspective character, and that he feels like a real person.
Which is the only reason I can see why any reader would want to carry on with this thing--you pretty much have to like the main character. If you don't, why would you worry about how worried he is?
So that was something.
- Mood:
awake
Comments
Meanwhile a cheer group can keep a writer on task, and enjoying the process, which is a plus.
That's pretty much what we're doing at the moment: we're all at stages with our projects where getting the thing written is the important part. There's been some talk about more serious critiquing when we feel ready--that is, when we've done all we can with the draft in hand--and that should be interesting.
One thing that helps is, none of us has inflated ideas of our own worth as writers, so we aren't making each other obnoxious. Just making sure we know we're not alone.
Additionally, I think I need a writing group like that. My writing group has got this guy who, no matter what is going on in any story, always want to know about male character X. One of our writers brought in a story which was, at base, about a woman trying to tell her boyfriend she was pregnant, and he wanted the story to be from the male perspective...
2) Hee! My writing group had one guy who wanted to be in a writing group, but did not like mysteries, so he spent several meetings challenging us to explain why we bothered with mysteries instead of "good books." (I mentioned this group was formed specifically for mystery writers, right?)
Eventually, we killed him and buried his body in a hidden location. Because we are mystery writers and we know how to do that sort of thing.
No, seriously--eventually I told him that I was fine with him writing something out of scope and participating that way, but I was for damn sure not defending my mystery-writing ways to him. And that was the last we saw of him...
a) Well, I used to find any time I tried to do anything of any length, I spent months revising the first 30 pages before I just gave up entirely. There's some crazy advice out there, though, too -- Jack Hodgins says after you've finished your first draft and re-edited it a billion times and worked it to death, you should set it aside and rewrite the whole thing without looking at the original. I don't think I could handle that.
b) Oh, jeez...anyone who sets out to write "a good book" of THAT sort is probably just a self-important asshole anyway. *isn't judgmental, or anything*
Clearly, that's advice for the unpublished, because there is no way you could do that with a deadline!
Although, I have this one project I worked on for years when I was learning to write a mystery, and I think if I ever revived it I would write the whole thing fresh from an outline. The way it is now, there are too many voices--as my writing changed, so did the tone of the story, and it's patchy.
2) I dunno about asshole, but this guy was pretty self-important. We'd have let him be in the group and write "literary fiction," but you know... if you don't like mysteries and consider them a waste of time... don't join a mystery-writers' group. Period.
Although, yeah... there's a certain type of writer who sets out to write "art" and you just want to hit them over the head with something.