Writing Group Presentation: Part One

Well, I had my second presentation on "The Care and Feeding of Writing Groups" last night and had two folks show up. Not a big audience but we had good conversation and I did end up selling one book so you could say I sold to fifty percent of the audience. That doesn't sound bad. Since not a lot of folks heard my presentation, I thought I might run it as a series here on the blog. It was quite a lot of work to just give to four people.  Below is part 1:

Part 1: Introduction.

Good _____ (insert time when you are reading this). Welcome. Thanks for coming.

Our topic here is on writing groups, but first let me introduce myself.

My name is Charles Gramlich, and I’ll confess that I’m a writer. That’s like  confessing I’m weird. But I bet I’m not the only one here. (I see you all out there in the blogosphere.)

I live in Abita Springs, Louisiana but teach at Xavier University in New Orleans. When I mention my other life as a college teacher, most assume English Professor. Nope. I’m in psychology. When I tell people I’m a psychologist, most assume I’m clinical. No again. I’m a biological psychologist, which means I study the brain.

I’m here (not really) with other members of my current writing group: Louisiana Inklings. We were founded May 22, 2008, by Alfred Olinde.

Other members include: Al Burstein, Sandra Loucks, D’Wanna Haynes, Sara Dickey, Laurie Walsdorf, Elizabeth Barilleaux, Isabella MacDonald Smith, and Mike Malloy.

Years before I became interested in psychology, I thought about being a writer. It came out of my love of reading. It started with me wanting to tell stories to myself like the ones I got so much pleasure out of.

I wrote my first book at 18. A western. It was awful and will never see the light of day. But I learned a lot from it. At 24, I wrote my second book, which eventually was published. After much rewriting.

I also wrote some short stories in grad school but became serious about trying to get published in 1988, after 2 years at Xavier. My first stories sold in 1989 and I date my writing life from there. So, I’ve been doing it a long time now.

In my first few years I had no writing group. Didn’t even know such things existed. I joined a small one at Xavier in 1993 and have been in one type of group or another ever since. Having a group is important to me. Maybe it could be for you. So let’s talk about writing groups. 

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Withholding Information

I'm in a critique group that meets once a week and I enjoy it. I often find it very helpful. Right now I'm submitting chapters of a novel in progress to the group, and a couple of comments I got at our last meeting on that chapter started me to thinking about the power of information in writing.

One group member wanted me to reveal more about a character when we first meet her. Another wanted to know what role the "wind" was playing in the book because I'd featured the breeze in each of the previous chapters we'd looked at.

I appreciated the questions but they're not going to get what they want. Not right now, at least. The wind will be important. The character will be seen again. But for writers, "information" is the currency we buy and spend with. And we dare not give any information away for free. We are buying our readers' attention and emotional involvement, and we have to milk every last bit of purchasing power out of our information.

I don't remember where I heard it, but somewhere along the line I picked up a guideline for writing that I think is very important. "Never give the reader any more information than they absolutely have to have to understand what is happening in the story. Tell them only what they "have" to know and keep every other bit of information under wraps until it, too, has to be revealed.

That's a rule I can live with.
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Peeve

My peeve this week is unnecessary work!

My work week is usually pretty busy, and perhaps because we were off on Monday, this week has been particularly hectic. Other than simply reading through 5 pages of my novel and making some minor corrections to it, I haven’t written a word in three days. I’ve not been able to get through more than about a 100 pages in the books I’m reading. Even at night, I’ve been doing school work.

So, when I’m backed up like that, the arrival of unnecessary work really chaps. Here’s some examples.

1: IRB STUFF:

A: I had an IRB (research) proposal to approve, one among many, and I finished reading over it and wrote the approval letter last night. This morning I mailed the approval letter. Not 10 minutes later an email request came in from the researcher to change something in the project. The approval letter that I spent time constructing is now a waste. I have to do another one. Between receiving the first proposal and the new changes, 2 days passed. Couldn’t the researcher have put a little more thought into their first effort so that one letter would have sufficed?

B: I got a proposal from a researcher at another university who requested that I accelerate my normal approval process because they had already bought their airplane ticket to come to Xavier to collect the data. Because they were asking for approval via email rather than by sending me a hard copy, I had to write a contract for our review. I’m required by law to keep hard copies of all submissions and I don’t want to spend my own money printing out hundreds of pages of material. So, I spelled out how I could help them under certain conditions. Two days later I get an email from them saying they were no longer applying to Xavier for approval at present. They’d discovered that they needed IRB approval from their own university first. Time writing contract = wasted. Couldn’t they have checked their procedures for how to do their own research first?

2: WRITING GROUP:

A: One writing group I’m a member of is a critique group. We email our material to a listserv and then print it out on our own for consideration at the next meeting. I sent some stuff in for a review. The day before our meeting, I get an email from one of the members asking me to resend. Now, everything we send to the listserv goes into the archives, and is probably in this individual’s personal email somewhere anyway. But because they didn’t print it out when it came through, they probably lost the email with the attachment somewhere in their inbox. Rather than taking the time to find it, or digging through the archives, they just decided to ask me to take a few minutes to resend. This individual is retired, btw. I’m not.

B: This has happened several times in the past and happened again this week. Someone submits a piece for review. I dutifully print it out, read, make my comments in preparation for our meeting. And then I get a second email a few days later with a “revision” of the previously submitted piece, usually with a note saying: “please ignore the first version you received and respond to the new version.”

All I can say is: ARGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Thanks for letting me rant!
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Online Writing Groups

I'm considering doing a piece on online writing groups and thought I'd toss the idea out here to see if it generates any discussion. I think there are pros and cons to online groups. Here's what I'm thinking so far:

Pros:
1. never have to leave your house.
2. online groups can be larger, thus providing more feedback.
3. a member can set their own pace for how they post and respond to posts easier.

Cons:
1. online groups tend to come and go faster than physical groups.
2. anonymity of net may lead to harsher criticism than is good for new writers
3. online groups typically don't form as strong emotional bonds.
4. online groups constantly get new members, which means a lot of redundancy in dealing with issues.

Anyone have anything to add to either pros or cons? What am I missing?

Punch it Up Too

Candice had a great post on Tuesday about "Punch it Up." This is something we've been talking about in our writing group for a while now, and I'm beginning to believe that it may be the most important piece of writing advice I've ever gotten. Check it out. I've yet to find any weaknesses with the advice, although I have found it difficult to implement at times.

Writing Groups and Miscellania

Stewart asked about our writing groups over on his blog, and C. S. Harris answered for the group that I'm in with her. Stewart also asked why our group stopped doing critiques, however, and I thought I might give my take on it. Others in the group might have additional views, but from my perspective there were several reasons.

1. One member of our core group was already in another group that did extensive critiques and didn't want to do them in both groups.

2. When our group first started out it was quite a bit larger than six people and only some members were actively and consistently writing. The non-writing members would tend to get the short end of the stick if we did critiques every week.

3. By the time we winnowed down to our core group, most of us felt that our limited time could be better used by discussing the larger details of writing, like characters, plot, etc., than by covering the nuts and bolts and specifics of a single piece.

4. Even though we don't consistently do critiquing, I think we'd all feel comfortable in sharing a piece of our work that we were having particular trouble with. I have several times, and have always got good feedback.

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Under miscellania, I rough drafted my next column for The Illuminata yesterday and once more--and even more--I owe a debt to those of you here in the blogosphere. The piece is going to be on characters and discussions online from Sid, Stewart, C.S., Steve and Sphinx Ink were very helpful. Salud!