Category Archives: writing routine

Find the Right Critique Group for You

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Photo credit: Photo by Dylan Gillis on Unsplash

by Debbie Burke

@burke_writer

Recently Jim Bell suggested I write a post about critique groups. Thanks for the idea, Jim!

What should a new writer look for?

New writers need three things:

  1. Accountability – A critique group motivates you to write consistently. It’s human nature that you’re more apt to meet someone else’s deadline than one you impose on yourself. A frequent comment: “If I didn’t have to turn in pages for my critique group, I wouldn’t have gotten around to writing.”
  2. Readers – Unless you’re keeping a journal only for yourself, you eventually want others to see your work. Critique groups are good first readers for a new writer.
  3. Feedback – The most important job of a critique group is to improve your writing. They spot trouble areas, inconsistencies, lack of clarity. The writer is often too close to the work to see problems. Critique groups offer objectivity. They make suggestions such as how to strengthen prose, what parts to cut or expand, ways to make characters come to life, etc.

When I was starting out, critique groups filled all three needs for me. Thirty-five years later, I’m pretty good about #1 (accountability) but I still need #2 and 3, readers and feedback. Currently I participate in two groups, one with long-time author friends, the other on Zoom with writers scattered around the country I’ve never met in person.

“But I’m not a joiner.” If you can effectively work alone, that’s great. But consider a critique group or beta readers for feedback before submitting for publication.

How to find a critique group:

  • Take writing classes – My first group grew out of students I met at creative writing classes at the community college.
  • Join a writing organization – Check out this list. Some are generalized with a broad interest range that includes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, screenwriting, journalism, memoirs, etc. Other groups focus on specific genres like romance, mystery, historical, children’s, Christian, etc. Most organizations offer active programs to help you meet other writers in your area of interest.
  • Attend a conference – Critique groups sometimes form among attendees.
  • Ask local bookstores and libraries – They frequently serve as meeting places for critique groups.
  • Search online – Meetup.com, Google, social media, etc.

How to set up a new group:

  • Gather six to eight other writers. That’s enough to give a variety of viewpoints. More than that, it’s difficult to review everyone’s submission in a timely way. If possible, find writers with more experience than yourself who are willing to help those with less experience.
  • Decide how often to meet–weekly, bi-weekly, monthly.
  • Find a convenient location, such as members’ homes, coffeeshops, bookstores, the library, etc.
  • Meet remotely via Zoom, Facetime, etc.
  • Agree on rules. Basic guidelines are: be respectful, courteous, helpful; don’t interrupt and don’t be snarky.

Join an existing group:

Some groups are open to newcomers. Others are by invitation only. You may need to submit a writing sample, or be recommended by someone already in the group.

Two common formats:

  1. Read pages aloud to the group. This takes time and limits the number of submissions that can be reviewed. But it also helps newer writers hear problems they don’t see on the page.
  2. Submit pages in advance, then discuss at the meeting.

Generally, the author remains silent during discussion. Afterwards, they may ask questions or comment.

Authors frequently want to defend their work or explain what they really meant, which is not necessarily what is actually written on the page/screen. Remember, when the story is published, the author isn’t there to explain. The writing must stand on its own.

Is this the right group for me?

  • Trial run – Ask if you can attend a couple of meetings (in person or by Zoom) to get to know other members. You can tell a lot by how respectfully they treat each other. Strong suggestion to newcomers: listen more than talk.
  • Compatible chemistry – Can you work with these people? Can they work with you? A group that writes gritty noir is not useful for a children’s picture book author.
  • Tone – Lively discussions are not the same as pointless arguments.
  • Attitude – Are they helpful and encouraging? Do they actively look for solutions to problems? Do authors go home excited and energized?

Danger Signs to Watch For:  

  • Poisoners – Some groups are just plain toxic. They exist to savage someone else’s writing to make themselves feel superior. Avoid such people at all costs. They never help and destroy your enthusiasm and confidence.
  • Divine Emperor – Someone appoints themselves the ruler of the group, delivering proclamations straight from Mount Sinai. When you’re not experienced, it’s easy to be intimidated by those who know more than you do. But what often masquerades as “knowledge” are simply arbitrary rules.
  • Monopolizer – This person demands attention. Drop everything right now and focus on my story because the world really does revolve around me. All take and no give doesn’t work in critique.
  • Closed Ears – This writer won’t listen to suggestions. S/he repeats the same problems month after month.
  • Frustrated Actor – This writer wants applause from an audience. S/he wants affirmation, not constructive criticism.

What Are Potential Problems?

  • In groups of new writers, sometimes the ignorant are leading the uninformed. Educate yourself by reading craft books and articles and taking classes. Expand your knowledge at the same time you practice writing.
  • Personality clashes may arise. Try talking one on one to work out your differences outside regular meetings. Maybe you can agree to disagree and keep discussion civil. If you can’t, one of you might have to find a different group.
  • Lack of participation. Some people rarely submit and offer lots of excuses. They’d rather talk about writing than write. Some submit and accept feedback, but don’t comment on others’ submissions. A group only works with active give and take.

Here are a few additional thoughts from one of my early guest posts for TKZ.

 I’m a big fan of critique groups because the ones I’ve been in included good people who are eager to learn and are glad to help others. YMMV. If you had a bad experience in the past, consider trying again with different people.

We all start out as beginners. Learning to write is intimidating. Sharing what you write with other can be scary.

But it can also lead you to rewards you never imagined.

~~~

TKZers: Are you in a critique group? What helps you? What causes problems?

~~~

Critique groups contributed invaluable help to every book in Debbie Burke’s Tawny Lindholm Thriller series. Available here.

Writing Strategies

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Writing Strategies: Breaking through writer’s block, keeping your butt in the writing chair, and rewiring your brain

The Kill Zone is a goldmine of advice and insight on all aspects of writing and publishing, from how to write and ways to publish, to creating characters, embracing story structure, and much more.

Getting to the keyboard to write, and once there, continuing to write is a challenge for many of us, especially with the internet ready to provide endless distractions. Today’s Words of Wisdom shares three excerpts from the KZB archives that provide ideas and strategies to help get past writer’s block and keeping motivated. You can read the full post for each excerpt via the date links. It’s also an entirely unintentional, serendipitous follow-on to James Scott Bell’s Reader Friday post yesterday entitled “Setting Yourself on Fire.”

So, the table has been set for today’s discussion. Feel free to comment and engage with other readers on any, or all, of these topics.

I was feeling uninspired in my writing (which probably explains why I was surfing the Internet and reading about placebo studies). So I wondered: If a placebo can cure cranky bowels, could it help me break through a minor case of writer’s block?

I decided to run my own unscientific study. I didn’t have any sugar pills on hand, so I reached for the next best thing: my daughter’s jelly beans.  I figured that labeling and ritual had to be part of the reason why placebos work, so I poured the jb’s into an empty prescription  container. (And I have to report that jelly beans look extremely potent when they’re staring up at you from a bottle of blood thinner medication.) Then I put a nice label on it marked “Creativity.”

As part of my morning ritual I started taking two “creativity pills” with my coffee. As I solemnly popped the beans, I paused to meditate for a few moments about my writing goals for the day.

And by God, it worked. I blasted right through that writer’s block. I wrote four pages that day, and haven’t looked back since.

The only thing is, now I’m afraid to stop taking the beans. I think I’m hooked. For my next batch I’m thinking of getting those special-order M&Ms–the ones you can order with little messages written on them. I’ll get them labeled with something like, “Writing is rewriting,” or whatever fits.

What about you? Do you have any silly rituals that help you get your creativity engine going?

–Joe Moore, January 11, 2011

I like to reexamine what tips I would give to aspiring authors, or even experienced authors, when I get a chance to speak to a group. Invariably the question comes up on advice and I’ve noticed that what helps me now is different than what I might have found useful when I started. Below are 8 tips I still find useful. Hope you do too, but please share your ideas. I’d love to hear from you.

1.) Plunge In & Give Yourself Permission to Write Badly  – Too many aspiring authors are daunted by the “I have to write perfectly” syndrome. If they do venture words onto a blank page, they don’t want to show anyone, for fear of being criticized. They are also afraid of letting anyone know they want to write. I joined writers organizations, took workshops, and read “how to” articles on different facets of the craft, but I also started in on a story.

2.) Write What You Are Passionate About – When I first started to write, I researched what was selling and found that to be romance. Romance still is a dominant force in the industry, but when I truly found my voice and my confidence came when I wrote what I loved to read, which was crime fiction and suspense. Look at what is on your reading shelves and start there.

3.) Finish What You Start –  Too many people give up halfway through and run out of gas and plot. Finish what you start. You will learn more from your mistakes and may even learn what it takes to get out of a dead end.

4.) Develop a Routine & Establish Discipline – Set up a routine for when you can write and set reasonable goals for your daily word count. I track my word counts on a spreadsheet. It helps me realize that I’m making progress on my overall project completion. Motivational speaker, Zig Ziglar, said that he wrote his non-fiction books doing it a page a day. Any progress is progress. It could also help you to stay offline and focused on your writing until you get your word count in. Don’t let emails and other distractions get you off track.

–Jordan Dane, August 7, 2014

Rewiring the brain

In an article published in WD in 2012, Mike Bechtle argued that mere willpower is not the most effective solution for breaking through writer’s block. He suggests that we rewire our brains to get back into the “flow”.

Here were my major takeaways from Bechtle’s article:

  • Write first thing in the morning, when alertness and energy levels are typically at their highest. (My note: If you can’t write first thing in the morning, try to write at the same time of day every day. Your brain will “learn” to kick into gear at its regular writing time)
  • Fuel your brain with a nourishing breakfast (Think eggs and fruit, not an apple fritter)
  • Limit distractions (Don’t check email or messages before writing, and don’t read a newspaper, turn on the TV, or listen to radio, either)
  • Keep writing sessions short (The brain can focus intensely for only short periods of time, according to Bechtle)
  • Apply glue to butt (Stay seated while writing, that is!)
  • Don’t set your expectations too high

Other strategies

In my first foray as a fiction writer back in the 90’s, I was a contract writer for the Nancy Drew series. The schedule for those books gave me little leeway for writer’s block. As soon as the chapter outline was approved, writers were given six weeks to complete the novel. Six weeks! I had to write those stories so fast, I felt as if I was hurling words at the word processor. Every project was a race to the finish line. “Writer’s block” was a foreign concept.

Then my editor left, and the publishing landscape changed. I stopped writing NDs and began to vaguely contemplate writing something on my own. Inertia quickly set in. Months became years, and I hadn’t written anything new.

15 minutes a day, that’s all we ask

I happened to read an article by Kate White, who is an author and former editor of Cosmopolitan Magazine. Her advice to getting started? Write 15 minutes per day, first thing in the morning. No. Matter. What.

To act on Kate’s suggestion, I had to set my alarm for five a.m. instead of six. That extra hour gave me enough time to down a cup of coffee and generate 15 minutes of quality writing time, before I headed off to my day job.

White’s advice worked for me. Fifteen minutes of writing daily eventually became an hour. Soon I was producing a minimum quota of a page a day.  (Yes, I know: a single page a day isn’t impressive as a quota. See the last bullet point of the previous list about lowering expectations.) A few months later, I had completed the first draft of my new novel.

Kathryn Lilley, June 16, 2015

***

Now it is your turn.

  1. Do you have tips for breaking through a minor writer’s block?
  2. How do you keep yourself writing?
  3. Do you have a routine you use, or a ritual?
  4. Any advice on keeping your keister in the writing chair?

Zoning in TKZ

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By Joe Moore
@JoeMoore_writer

I’ll be flying most of the day and may not get to respond to your comments. In case I don’t, here’s wishing all my TKZ blogmates and friends a wonder Thanksgiving Holiday.

—————-

Someone once asked: “I’ve heard writers talk of being ‘in the zone’ regarding their writing, which I take to mean being in an altered state of extreme creativity. But how, without drugs or other stimulus, do you get into that state?”

In fact, we hear the term in the zone used often, not only with writers, but athletes, artists, and just about any activity that requires skill, creativity and deep concentration.

So what is “the zone” and how do we enter it? Why is it so hard to remain there for extended periods of time?

Being in the zone can last for a few minutes, a couple of hours or a whole day. For those that never seem to enter the zone, it might be because they try too hard to do so. Sort of like when we stop trying to solve a problem, the solution suddenly comes to us through our subconscious.

Let’s try to define what being in the zone means, especially when it relates to writing. For me, it’s a mental state where time seems to disappear and my productivity greatly exceeds normal output. It might start after I’ve finished lunch and sat down at my PC to work on a new chapter. Without any feeling of the passage of time, I suddenly realize a couple of hours have gone by and I’ve produced 1000 words or more. I don’t remember the passage of time or anything that deals with my surroundings. I only remember “living” or becoming immersed in the story’s moment, having the words flow from a deeper source, and “awakening” from the writing zone as if only a few moments have passed.

I’ve never been hypnotized, but I can assume that being in the zone is somewhat like self-hypnosis. My body remains in the here-and-now, but my creative senses somehow find a hidden room inside my mind, a place normally under lock and key. And I’m able to enter it for a short time to let what’s there emerge into the light of day.

It can also feel like driving down the Interstate on a long trip deep in thought and suddenly realize I can’t remember the past ten miles.

I’ve never been athletic, but I bet it’s a similar scenario: a golfer is able to tune out the surrounding crowd of tournament spectators, the dozens of network cameras, the worldwide audience, the cheers from the distant gallery as his opponents make a great putt, and he’s able to enter a place where only his game stretches out before him. The rest slips by in a blur. Personal mind control.

So what is a good method for getting into the zone? Some writers use the “running start” technique by reading the previous day’s work or chapter. It gets them back into the story and hopefully the new words start to flow.

Others listen to music. This is something I often do. Nothing with lyrics, though. I listen to movie scores or piano and guitar solos. I find that it can help set a mood or become background “white noise” that blocks out other audible distractions. That’s because, for me, the biggest obstacle to zoning is distractions. It’s important to reduce interruptions and distractions by creating an environment where they are minimized. This means shutting my office door, closing the drapes on the windows, unplugging the phone, disconnecting Internet access, and most of all, choosing a time to write when those things can be fully managed. Doing away with distractions is no guarantee that I will enter the zone at will, but it does give me a fighting chance to at least knock on the door to one of those dark, hidden rooms upstairs and let my story flow out.

How about you Zoners? What’s it like for you to write in the zone? And do you have a method to slip easily into the zone?

—————

“Cotton Stone is a heroine for the ages.” – Douglas Preston, #1 New York Times bestselling author.

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Writing Rituals, Order and Routine

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by Clare Langley-Hawthorne

Over the last couple of months I witnessed first hand the power of order and ritual in my writing – or, more correctly, I witnessed what happens when order turns to disorder and the ritual of planning and creating disappears. All this because I agreed to step up and volunteer to be president of my sons’ elementary school parent teacher organization and in a giant ‘poof!’ of hot air all my creative order and energy disappeared with it. 

Taking stock after a couple of months I now realize just how important order, routine (and time!) is to my creativity – and how I have to reclaim them all, in order to re-establish the balance we all struggle to maintain between our writing life and our ‘other life’.

This fact was solidified when I read David Brooks’ op-ed in the New York Times entitled ‘The Good Order‘ – though this opinion piece veers into politics – it was the idea that creative people need to build and maintain their own order and routine that resonated with me – as well as the fact that doing so can be surprisingly hard (which the last few months have certainly demonstrated!). This op-ed piece also referenced a book entitled ‘Daily Rituals: How Artists Work” complied by Mason Currey (whose website on creative people’s daily routines I encourage you all to visit – if only to read first hand how many artists face their work with deliberation, ritual and routine). 

Many writers establish very strict routines in order to get their writing done. Anthony Trollope was at his writing desk by 5:30am and insisted on completing 250 words every fifteen minutes for the few hours he had before his day job started at the post office. Trollope produced a staggering 49 novels in 35 years writing this way. Stephen King gets up at the same time each day, has a glass of water and his vitamins, and sits at the same seat at his desk, where his papers are arranged in the same way each day, before he starts to write. King says this helps tell his mind this is time to start dreaming (a sentiment I love by the way!).  When John Grisham was first starting out, he would arrive at his legal office by 5:30am each weekday to write with a goal of completing a page a day. He says his rituals then were “silly and brutal but very important”.

Since volunteering my time and seeing it evaporate just as quickly, I now need to reestablish a new set of writing rituals and routines. I’ve never been one to have any real ritual beyond what I call the art of showing up with my bum in the seat and my fingers on the keyboard each day – but now I need to establish a new order and a renewed sense of discipline. I’m even contemplating setting my alarm clock so I won’t be able to let my volunteer time bleed into my creative time. 

So I’m turning to you my TKZers – how do you set your writing routine? Have you had to ‘reset’ that routine when circumstances changed and you suddenly found your writing time being eroded? If so, how have you gone about establishing a new routine or order?