Tools of the Trade

Dell Latitude laptop (used): $300
Donald Maass weekend workshop: $259
Kick-ass critique group: priceless

I must say, however, the Maass workshop was invaluable. I attended with my critique group, and all of us came away with great ideas on how to improve our current works in progress. Maass, a literary agent, is an incredible speaker and presented an engaging, hands-on workshop that changed the course of my novel (for the better--the WAY better). I remember walking out of the hotel on the last day and my protagonist screaming inside my head--you've made my life a living hell! Thanks, Maass. My hero hates you and me and my book is better because of it.

Two words summed up my experience from the workshop: magic happened.

But on to my kick-ass critique group. I am lucky. Extremely lucky. My group consists of two other people. "A" is my brother, and "J" is a woman I met at a meeting for the Monterey Bay Fiction Writers. We've been meeting once a week for a year or so. Each Friday we email our writing so the others can read through it and make comments on the pages, and then we meet on Tuesday evenings to discuss.

I've been in other critique groups where you bring your piece and read it aloud. That is not constructive. Who reads a book out loud? Plus, you can't catch the mistakes of grammar and spelling as easily or mull on the descriptions, point-of-view, or plot threads. We also get more done this way, since reading ten pages and commenting on the pages goes a lot faster than reading ten pages out loud and expecting the others to provide the same helpful critique.

After meeting for a while we discovered our strengths in critiquing each other's work. J is good at catching grammar errors, confusing sentences, and plot discrepancies. A is good at seeing where we tend to "editorialize", or tell the reader what the action and dialogue already shows--sort of like beating the reader over the head with a point. They say I'm good at spotting issues with POV.

If you’re a writer, get into a good critique group. Now. If you’re in one where the members read their stuff out loud, try our approach of previewing the writing then discussing it during the meeting. I’d like to hear what you think.

It's all about the journey...

Or so they say.

One of the reasons I'm writing the journey is to document the good and the not so good, all along the way. Like most, I tend to view the past in 20/20.

This trip started back in 2003. Monday night, January 13--to be exact. I sat down at my computer and started telling a story. Oh, boy, did it suck. But for the next two years I wrote every day, six to eight hours (after working my day job) and all day and most of the night on weekends. Ask my husband what was going on at that time and he'll swear that a black hole swallowed our marriage.

So the story that sucked became a novel. And I thought it was pretty good. It could've been better of course, but ask any writer if they've ever finished anything. Convinced that it was as good as it was going to get at that time, I started looking for an agent. I think I sent a query to about 20 or so. I got two requests for more material. I started working on another novel. Then the two agents that wanted to see more of the first novel rejected it. Then I had a baby. Then life got more complicated.

That was eight months ago, and I have stopped shopping around the first book and am enjoying my stay in Secondnoveltown. I am enjoying the story so much that I’d love to talk about the characters and what they are going through, but this isn’t their story. It’s mine. Someone (a published author) once told me that the road to publication is long. Today I’m feeling optimistic, so I’ll take that and be glad--as long as I’m having fun along the way.