Not Sure This Is Useful to a Writer

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I recently started attending a Writer's meet-up in my area. At first, I had high hopes for it. There were 3 women and one guy there, and we read a sample of each person's work, and then made notes on the pages, and discussed them. I felt really uncomfortable, even though I valued the input. The next time, the group was different. The same two women (both co-organizers) were there, but there was a different guy. We did the same thing; passed writing samples around, read and critiqued them. The third group I attended, was with the original three women, the same guy who came to the second group, and myself.

Now, this is why I am wondering how much use this group is to me:

First, one of the women who gives the most criticism, never brings in her own stuff. I am suspecting that, while she likes to give criticism, she doesn't want to receive any. She makes excuses about "writing very slowly." That is all well and good, but I am starting to resent this.

Second, the critiques I received, on three separate occasions, (on the same piece of work) vary so much, that I am feeling overwhelmed. Especially since one of the women who hadn't seen my work before, and now gave additional input.

The time I must spend processing the events at the group is long. Not only am I trying to receive the criticism graciously, I have no way of knowing if these people are right, or their insights of any value to me. Also, there is just the stress of juggling a group of Nts and all their social constructs, with trying to receive a benefit from attending these groups.

BTW, 2 of the women are published writers, so I am trying to be fair in my assessment of what they have to offer. But I am strongly tempted not to go back. I feel like my work is being hijacked and dissected beyond recognition.

There must be something wrong with me. I would unfortunatly assume that these people were going to steal my work!

I also find that anything I write is much better than after someone tries to "fix" it. I'd ditch the group....

I don't think inviting people to ravage your self confidence is a good idea. Just because someone is a published writer doesn't make them an expert critic - I'd trust the opinion of a professional editor more. Besides, I'm not sure a written work can be accurately assessed until it's finished. If its first draft material, its going to get tweaked, altered and rewritten several times before I'm even ready to show it to anybody.

To me the best sign that what I'm doing is working is when someone sees a few pages and then asks unprompted what's going to happen next - if they're interested enough that they want to know the fate(s) of the characters, then I know the narrative drew them in.

That said however, I too am extremely paranoid about having my work stolen or plagiarized (only because I've been screwed in every other way imaginable by people I thought I could trust) - there are literally only a couple of people I would show an unfinished manuscript. I have noticed in the past, though that everyone who reads a story tends to critique it differently, and sometimes that criticism is just skewed point of view on their part, not valid rationale. Someone told me once that a scene I'd written couldn't happen the way I'd written it because of the physical nature of the character involved. Within a week, there was an article in the national news about a virtually identical event involving a real life person of that exact description - and I wasn't surprised because I'd heard of it happening before, that's why I wrote it that way.

Just do what you do - if have a bit of talent and you're an avid reader yourself, you ought to have developed a gut instinct for what works and what sounds lame.

Ditto on what Willard said.

All I write are legal appeals, and I find that having too many editors is NOT helpful.

I agree! This is indeed a rough draft, and a mere seven pages at that which I've been sharing.


Well, that much has happened here, at least. Everyone said that they were dying to know what happened next. It was the nitpicking at grammatical errors that got to me. Eventually, grammatical stuff would be addressed! This is just a rough draft, at present.


True. There is a space on this meet-up's website where we can opt to post part of our work, so that people can read it ahead of time, but I wouldn't put anything of mine on such an unprotected place!

This is exactly what happens here; too many cooks spoil the stew, IMO.