Question Week, Day 4: Critique Partners and Trust

Today’s question:

How did you get paired up with Marley as critique partners? And second, how many people do you show your work to as it’s in progress? Not ever having attempted to write a book, I can only imagine how personal a story is to the author and how much emotional investment one would have in the manuscript. So I’m guessing that it’s important to really trust those that are critiquing it. Having met Marley briefly and read her comments in your blog, it seems she really “gets you”, and you seem to have an enormous amount of faith in her opinions, which I think makes you very lucky! So how did you two find each other?

Marley and I originally met on the writing boards at eHarlequin.com in late 2002. We formed an online critique group with a few other members that for various reasons, didn’t work out (one member had health problems, others had working styles or ethical viewpoints incompatible with critiquing…by which I mean that she thought my characters would go to hell for having premarital sex) After a while, it went dormant, and Marley and I turned into email buddies. Around this time, we both began working with other critique partners from our respective home chapters. (Actually, we each still work with these writers.)

That summer (2003), we met in “person” at the Romance Writers of America Conference in New York City. (Marley says I tackled her in the lobby. But I was so intimidated and knew no one!) Online is fine, but I’m a big believer in meeting people in person. I’d already met several people from writing boards that, in person, didn’t seem to match their online personality at all. There’s a definite sense of discord there; I’m not sure if I can trust them. Marley matched completely. We spent a large portion of the conference hanging out, and became very close friends in the months that followed (online). That was when we started exchanging work again.

So it’s been about three years, and we’ve been through everything: close calls at publishers, lines shutting down, rejections, rewrites, revision letters, at least one agent, coordinating a contest, several conferences, personal and professional trauma, and, most importantly, more than a dozen manuscripts.

Marley and I work well together because we have very similar goals. We wanted to be published, and now that we are we want to continue to be contracted writers of commercial fiction and we’re willing to work for it. We know it’s not easy and we have to constantly challenge ourselves and each other to improve upon our craft and try to fit into the industry. We know that means writing, rewriting, not taking critiques personally, and in general getting tough about our writing. I don’t know that it’s any different than professional coleagues in any other industry. I was recently speaking with my father, a physician, and he says that I talk about my writing friends the way he thinks of his own colleagues. Some people are surprised when they hear I’m so close with other writers, “my competition,” but I really don’t think of them that way. Regular readers of the blog know how much I love other writers!

On to part two: How many people do I show my work to? As many as it takes! I believe in the “dark room” period. In fact, I don’t tell anyone (with the possible exception of Sailor Boy) about my ideas until I’ve “developed” the story significantly. Usually that means a synopsis and several chapters. After that, it’s pretty much fair game. I show things to Sailor Boy, to a reader friend; I have two regular critique partners, Marley and Cheryl; now that I have an agent, I show it to my agent, of course; and depending on the situation I have been known to get other opinions from some other writing friends (most of whom are thanked in the acknowledgement pages of SSG). Sometimes, the more unsure I am about choices I’ve made in a book, the more people I show it to.

Occasionally, I’ll hear newbie writers talk about trust issues; they seem certain that their critique group will “steal the idea.” Whether or not stealing of ideas happens or can happen is a topic for a whole other blog post, but suffice it to say that the sharing work fear tends to get drummed out of you very early as a pro writer. Between the contest circuit and the submission circuit, where dozens upon dozens of people at every house read your work, ideas are out there. But also, the people I critique with are friends and trusted colleagues. And I think the importance of the idea is very genre dependent. Science Fiction as a genre tends to be more conceptual, whereas Romance is less about the premise and more about the execution of said premise, so I think in general romance writers are a little more open about their uncontracted properties. But you know, to be safe, keep that stuff off the internet. 🙂