Write On Con - Day 2 Highlights

From Rise of The Planet of the Apes

I had a bit of a break down today. Somehow, with a combination of sixth sense/telepathy and an uncanny sense of smell, my husband knew I was at a loooow ebb and came home from work early. Took the kids to the pool and sent me off by myself. God bless that man.

I saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes. It's good, see it. I only have two things to say: Andy Serkis needs an Oscar or three and Tom Felton needs to stop playing bad guys. If you thought Draco was an ass, imagine Draco being mean to animals.

All this is a long winded way of saying, didn't get to delve into Write On Con as much as I wanted today. But the beauty of this conference is that it's always there. You can 'attend' by reading the post/transcript or watching the vlog. And the magic that happens in the forum is priceless.

I do have to give a special shout out to the Barbara Poelle/Holly Root agent panel. In addition to query/agent/writing gold that you've come to expect from the fab agents on Write On Con there was: Red Velvet Cake and chocolate pudding; martinis; leeches and aaaaardvarks. It was hard to explain to my kids why I was barking with laughter alone in my office. "Are you watching a good cartoon, mommy?" 

Do yourself a favor and check it out.

Also, there's a great vlog by agent Kate Testerman. She outlines the check list you must have ready before you query. CHECK YOURSELF BEFORE YOU WRECK YOURSELF. You can't jump into the query fray until you have done everything on the list.

Tomorrow, when I catch up, I'm going to check out:

YA Muses - on Crit Groups

On Compactness by Weronika Janczuk 

Your Own Hero's Journey

PLUS all the new stuff for tomorrow. I'm feeling faint. But in a good way. 

We're Not Candy - Even Though We Look So Fine and Dandy

Completely flying by seat o' my pants with this writer's group thing, our first meeting is January 16 and I don't really have game plan yet. It almost seems excessive to start one in this day and age when there seems to be a group for everything from stamp lickers to lint collectors. All I can say, Headmistress, is that I did try to find an existing group to belong to and it just didn't seem to exist. Sorry, I've got 'headmistress' and repressive boarding school atmosphere on the brain as that's where I'm revising in my current ms.

I'll be honest, I'm a little frightened of my WIP. It's just been so much easier to write than my first book (which is still waiting to be rescued, in beautiful little broken pieces, under my desk) that I'm waiting for the disaster to hit. The huge plot hole or the hero turing out to be a complete douche bag. I definitely hit a bump in sections two and three, where the story gets more complicated, but still, it seems so real to me, the world so accessible. That kind of ease is obviously telling me that something is wrong. My husband says I'm being ridiculous, it's a great story and I'm just being negative. OKAY. He actually only said the 'great story' part, I'm just imagining the other things because I'm so negative. Am I the only one who finds it hard to deal with when things are going well? I'm trying not to jinx it, trying to enjoy it, but I keep looking up waiting for the other Doc Marten to drop and hit me in the head.

PS. Title of this post has nothing to do with this post. Have just had that song from that 80's drug PSA stuck in my head all day.

Do It Yourself Critique Group

Everyone says I need a critique group. Which I guess is a passive aggressive way of saying, your work sucks, you need help. But I agree, I do need a critique group (and sometimes my work does suck. But I have awesome hair and yours is thinning out). I need someone other than my husband who believes too much in what I write and dear friends (or faithless hussies) who say they’ll read my book but never have the time – you know who you are.

So, when NaNoWriMo rolled around, I actually went to the weekly write-ins. I’d never done that before because I’m not a joiner (imagine that said with a sneer and maybe a pack of Lucky Strikes rolled up in the sleeve of my white t-shirt.) The write-ins were great. I wrote tons and liked the people who showed up too, all local writers.  

In the spirit of ‘Gee, we could put on a show right here, in the barn!’ I decided to start a Bucks County Writers Group. Sounds impressive, right? Especially when I capitalize each word – we don’t respect capitals as much as we should. I digress. The problem is that I don’t know anything about critiquing. I gave one person a critique once, one that I thought was really kindly and encouraging. They’ve never spoken to me again. I don’t think it was because of what I said, exactly, because I wasn’t in any way mean. But because of what I didn’t say, ie. YOU ARE AWESOME! WHY AREN’T YOU PUBLISHED ALREADY!!

That’s what we all want to hear, really and when we don’t hear it, knickers get knotted. But here’s what’s worse. Someone does tell you that. It’s happened to me. Someone intelligent and lovely told me exactly that when reading one of my ms. I kept asking her if she was yanking my chain. She proceeded to tell me that indeed, no, she was not blowing smoke up my skirt. I declaimed, ‘Are you shitting me?’ It went on like this for a while. She still stands by her statement and I think she took smack, just the one time, and hallucinated someone else’s book when she was reading mine.

So, what’s the right mix of critique? How can you be helpful and encouraging while helping the writer weed out the garbage? Are there steps? Ground rules? Any suggestions on giving and getting critique?