My writing group

I’m part of a novelist writing group.

Every Thursday evening we meet with copies of the next scene from our manuscript. We read it out loud while our fellow writers follow along, making corrections and notes. Then we workshop, and sometimes debate, certain aspects of that chapter.

While I’m no spring chicken, three of the members are older, and one is younger. All of us are men, not through choice, just by design. And each project we are working on is vasty different.

Opinions do vary.

Last week, two of the writers felt a dialogue exchange between two of my characters was unnatural, while the younger member disagreed. I found this fascinating, believing it was a generational thing until the other older writer agreed with the younger writer.

Ironically, the person running this group will instantly defend his work, and it can take a little work to get our critique to land. Recently, a couple of us believed two of his characters were the same person, as their names were similar.

So I explained I had a similar problem with a recent novel. I had to re-read several chapters to distinguish who was who between two toxic males with similar names. He understood, and the following week their names were the same, but the spelling of one changed so it couldn’t be confused.

To be fair, I don’t always understand the critique I’m given either.

That’s when having your fellow writers make notes on the copies of the scene you’ve presented, comes in handy. I also add all their verbal suggestions to my copy straight away, and when I do my rewrites, I start by reviewing my copy.

Then, one by one, I go through theirs and make further corrections because, while I may not have originally understood their critique, seeing it written down often makes it clearer.

Two, in particular, are very good at editing, crossing out my redundant sentences. One of those men is a grammar expert, so I take extra note of his corrections.

It’s not all criticism.

We also tick the sentences we love. The youngest member has a cinematic style to his writing. One of the others creates humour in his prose.  Another is taking us on a mystic journey as a dead person recalls her life. I’m presenting a novel where eventually I’ll read gay sex scenes to my straight colleagues.

My work also features an older woman as a main character and already, the organiser of our group is more interested in her than the other younger gay characters. He even warned me about having too many protagonists, until one of the other writers reminded him about The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas.

I’m glad I found this group.

I was part of a monthly writing group where we mostly talked, then gave feedback on work previously emailed to us. I also tested a gay group but not much happened at our meetings.

I now have a functioning group, with members who have varied expert opinions. We also email each other with further ideas after our meet ups.

And while I may not agree with everything said, I’ve learnt what everyone’s strengths are, and learnt critique sometimes takes time to sink in.