Accessible authors seem to use critique groups and beta readers more often than not. Personally, I don't grok the concept because--while I think good editors are a mandatory and valuable part of the process--the writing part doesn't strike me as a collaborative effort.
(By accessible, I mean those that blog and actively maintain their own Facebook pages where they talk openly about their own writing processes.)
It's difficult for me to imagine handing out chapters of a work in progress and then meeting to talk about everyone's reaction. Hemingway is famous for having said "don't talk your story away." By that, I think he meant that talking about it gets too much of it "out there" and pretty soon it's no longer fresh and spontaneous for the writer when s/he sits down to write.
Recently, another author wrote a post saying that critique groups and beta readers are a mandatory part of today's writing process. My comment on her post was "why?" I added that as far as I knew, all the famous writers of the past didn't farm their novels out in pieces
while they were being written to others who would all add their input.
Her response was that even the best publishing houses these days usually don't do the mentoring and editing that the best writers of years gone by enjoyed. Furthermore, those of us with small presses usually get more copy editing than an on-going page-by-page analysis with multiple re-writes. Writers with agents and mainstream publishers often go through many more drafts than small-press and self-published authors do.
Critique groups and beta readers are supposed to fill in some of the gaps for those of us without strong agents and/or proactive editors. I'm not sure exactly how unless the critique groups and beta readers are also very strong writers and editors who know the genre and know what sells and what doesn't.
I have to sneak up on my writing to make it happen. The idea of other fingers in the pie is a frightening concept to me. What about you?
- Do you have a group or multiple readers who look at your books before you submit them. If so, how do you handle group situations that turn into brainstorming sessions where contrasting ideas for "fixing" your work are tossed out on the table?
- Is everyone else in the group at "your level of talent" and equally aware of the DOs and DON'Ts of your genre? That is, if you're writing literary fiction, you're probably not going to get expert help out of people who don't read it or write it. Does this negate the group's value?
- Even though you, as the writer, have the final call, is it harder to make that call once their are a lot of other opinions in the mix?
I'm curious how other authors make the process work.
--
Malcolm
