Critique Groups, Workshops, etc.

Most of the writers (published and unpublished) I've spoken to over the years have tried a variety of tricks and techniques to help them overcome obstacles in the way of their success. Among the recommendations I hear most commonly are "find a critique group" and "take a workshop."

I've done both. Actually, I've done both more than once. And my experiences have been about as wide-ranging as you can possibly imagine. Just as there are good, bad, and ugly agents, and good, bad, and ugly editors, so there are good, bad, and ugly critique groups and workshops.

Workshops are a bigger investment because they can be quite expensive, so you want to do considerable research before you take one. For example, when I was looking for a workshop the first thing I did was Google "writing workshop New York City." (I don't live in the city, but I knew I wasn't going to find one near me -- chances are, you will need to look at the closest large city to find a workshop.) The first link was to the Gotham Writers' Workshop. They proudly say that Forbes lists them as "best of the web" for writing classes. Actually, they're the only writing classes Forbes lists. The section is "continuing education" and the article refers solely to the online branch of Gotham, but the recommendation is impressive nonetheless.

Since I didn't want to take online classes, I asked around about the offline classes and got very varied responses. The short version is that everything depends on the teacher. Unfortunately, you don't know who your teacher will be until you pay your fee and show up at the class. Given the price of the courses, that scared me off.

Eventually I found a workshop by a published author who had been reviewed many times in both her writing life and her workshop life. She offered everything from 3 hour workshops to 10-week classes, so I started with the 3-hour one. Although at the end of the class I was uncertain how useful it had been, by the end of the following week I found myself completely revitalized. So recently, when my writing was becoming more a chore than a joy, I signed up for the full-day workshop. To say it was useless would be an understatement.

Naturally, I found this experiencing extremely frustrating. But I learned an important lesson: ask, ask, ask. Before I took the short class, I asked around. Having taken that one, I assumed the longer class would be just as useful. But when I asked around after the longer class, I could tell from how people described the format that I would not enjoy it. So if you're interested in a workshop and don't know anyone who's taken it, ask the teacher for the emails of students who've taken the workshop and don't ask them "was it good," ask "what did you do?" (The teacher may or may not be able to describe what the exercises are, but the students will be able to fill you in.)

Critique groups usually don't have fees associated with them, so trying out several is easier. But in some ways, finding one that's a good fit is even more difficult than it is with workshops. There are several factors involved in finding the right group for you, and I've quit groups because of all of them.

• Do you all have the same goals?
  - if you want to be published, you don't want a group where others just want motivation to keep writing
  
• Do you all have similar levels of expertise?
  - you don't want to be the "teacher", who always ends up helping other members without getting useful feedback, but you also don't want to feel as if you're dragging the group down or being a burden to the other members
  
• Do you want to critique only others in your genre, or do you want multiple types of writing represented in your group?
  - I feel competent to critique mysteries, romances, chick lit, thrillers, and possibly young adult. I don't, however, feel as if I can be useful to anyone who writes "literary" fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, non-fiction or poetry. And I don't enjoy reading those genres, so I don't want to have to do so every couple of weeks.
  
• Do you have the same critique style as others in the group?
  - I am a fairly straightforward critic. I don't like making notes on someone's work "gently," nor do I take offense when other people are harsh in their statements about my work. I don't say "look, you idiot...," but I do circle grammatical mistakes, write "awk" in margins, write things like "why would she say something like that? It makes no sense." I don't want to make anyone cry.
  

I'm planning on leaving the critique group I am currently in, mostly because a third of the group writes sci-fi. The one sci-fi author I've critiqued said he found my comments useful, but I've decided I just don't want to read it anymore. I'm also too busy these days to participate in any meaningful fashion.

All this is not to say that you shouldn't join a critique group or take a workshop--both can be exceedingly useful and insipring. But most of us have limited time and limited funds so we need to be very careful how we use them.