Writers’ groups are good, but . . .

Our typical meeting entailed bringing five pages of your work in progress (WIP) and handing a copy to everyone at the group for them to critique while you read it aloud. Getting the papers back was always an interesting experience. Some would write nothing but nice comments and some would tear your work apart, not always for the better. Like any editing process, you have to pick and choose what you want to change in your WIP.

For me, editing is always a tough process so I would throw the sheets in a basket and forget about them until the following week. Our group met on a Tuesday night and I would spend most of Tuesday reading last week’s edits from the group and writing new stuff or editing whatever I was going to take. Usually not one of my current Ryan Weller Thrillers.

Which brings me to problem Number 1: Wasted time.

I wasted a whole day working on something just for the group when I could have been working on one of my Ryan Weller Thrillers.

As I progressed in my writing and published my first book, I realized I was in an elite club amongst the group members. There were three of us who had self-published a book. Then I dropped two, three, etc. over the years.

Problem 2: At some point, you outgrow the group.

The person leading my group had published a book, but I realized it wasn’t so much about writing and publishing for him as it was being the leader of the group and theorizing about writing (and to be honest, his writing wasn’t that great).

The group just couldn’t help me grow.

When I published Book 6, Dark Fury, I changed editors and found someone who could help me grow as a writer. I needed to fill in the gaps that separated me from the greats in my genre. The editor of Book 6 led me on a search for another as our schedules constantly conflicted, but through him, I realized I needed someone in the thriller genre who read thrillers, edited thrillers, knew the thriller market, and I could establish a long-term relationship with. That led me to Pete at Novel Approach. (Don’t steal him. I need him!)

Problem 3: The members of the group were more concerned with social hour than actually writing and they didn’t take the craft seriously.

Once I diagnosed myself as a pantser (a person who doesn’t outline but writes by the seat of their pants), I realized most of the group was also that way. Pantsing is tough. The opening idea strikes like lightning and the words flow, but at some point, you have to add in a real plot and be able bring things together in a crescendo at the end. For a pantser, it’s hard to do that. (After 13 books I’m finally figuring it out)

Take Karen (the names have changed to protect the whatever) she was (is) a serial panters. She would write the opening, flounder in the middle, then not show up for a couple of weeks, and when she next appeared, she would have a completely different story. She never finished anything. While she was an accomplished person in many ways, writing the great American novel was not in her wheelhouse. I shouldn’t say that. She didn’t dedicate herself to becoming the next great novelist.

Problem 4: People don’t want to change.

Their stories are a labor of love, and believe me, I completely understand. We had one guy who wrote short stories in a country-folk style. He would never correct the pages and would bring them back over and over, expecting a different result until people don’t want to edit or provide feedback for him anymore.

Problem 5:  The writing group locks us into thinking in five pages.

And this is a serious one. Probably the worst in my opinion. I’ve seen writers who had great stories to tell but kept chopping it down to get it into five pages, lacking description, character development, transitions, or any number of things we writers constantly work on. Not only does the work get edited down to fit into a certain basket, but on a longer book like mine, the group members would forget the plot, the characters, etc. And if you introduced one of those things back on page 52 , they couldn’t always remember it because you’re on page 168 and ten weeks removed from when you introduced said topic/person/plot line.

Then you fall into the trap of redundancy and writing for the group so when you do go back and read your entire work, you see you’ve repeated yourself twenty times on something trivial or in catering to the whims of the group.

Problem 6: The group is not your target audience.

When I started at my group, I was thirty-eight and the youngest person there. Most were retired, or close to it. Most did not read widely or were not interested in thrillers. One of the books I took to read was the very first one I’d ever written. It was about conspiracies and militias taking over the U.S. government. Every time I would finish reading, the comments were not about the work itself but the content of the work. One lady refused to read/edit it and declared that I was going to get arrested for writing a manifesto. Trust me it’s no worse than anything Tom Clancy has written. Maybe with the current political climate I should dust it off and put it out there for everyone to read. But I digress.

A friend of mine is writing an opiate addiction memoir. Many in the group have never been addicted to anything more than cigarettes or chocolate, so they are not her target audience, which is people who are or have recovered from opiate addiction or need inspiration to recover. The group badgers her about writing style, about too many therapists, about her story as a whole, suggesting ways to fictionally change it to make it better. (Hello, it’s a memoir!)

Problem 7: The Clash

At some point, you’re going to clash with another person in the group, be it over writing, a difference in opinion, personalities, or the make and model of a car being used in a story.

I once read my pages and I knew right away that I was going to hear about a certain section of the work. After six people hammered me for the same thing, the seventh, who also happened to be the group leader started in on the same thing, I asked him not to beat a dead horse and talk about something else in the WIP. He immediately got up and left, not to be seen for several months. I emailed him and apologized for hurting his feelings as that was what I had not intended.