With one week left before the deadline to enter the Colorado Gold Literary Awards, we are receiving more entries every day. I’m not here to discuss procrastination (plenty of other posts have already been written about that) but rather what a writer might be doing in those final days before a deadline, be it for…
Tag: critique groups
Conquering Your Fear of Critique
I recently asked a writer friend why he wasn’t in any critique groups, and his answer surprised me. He told me he’s always been a lone wolf when it came to his writing and that he doesn’t know how to share it without the fear of a group response “killing” the momentum. (Or, I suspect,…
An Unexpected Benefit of Critique Groups
We humans aren’t good at seeing our own flaws, especially in our writing. When we look at something we wrote, we know exactly what we intended to say. So when we read the words back to ourselves—get this—it makes perfect sense to us! Our brain automatically fills in any gaps, ignores the hiccups, even glosses…
A Writer’s Tribe: Critiquers, Alpha Readers, and Beta Readers, Oh My!
Writing is a solitary occupation. Well, except for the tribe of other people you need to help get your story edited, revised, polished, published, marketed, and sold. True, the actual act of putting words onto the page tends to be very solitary, even if you’re typing away in a crowded café (remember those?). But at…
ZOOM Critique Sessions – are they for you?
For some time my critique group has made accommodations to stay in touch with members who have moved to distant cities. We’ve used Skype, but have frequently encountered technical difficulties like transmission, sound, or images. As time went by, other members moved to distant locales, and Skype couldn’t accommodate more than one person. Enter the…