Why you should join a Writing Group...

One of the many things I miss about the UK is Abingdon Writers and I'll tell you why. Being part of a critique group really forces you to think about what you don't like about a piece of writing. What doesn't make sense, what doesn't flow, what needs clarifying. It's lovely to have friends and family gush over your writing and assure that you're going to be the next J K Rowling or whatever but that's not at all helpful. Ego boosting, yes. Making you a better writer, no. Constructive criticism is what it's all about.

I was lucky enough to be part of a writers group that has just gone from strength to strength. From starting off as a bunch of writers who had never shared their writing with strangers, much less agents, to being a talented group of writers, some of whom have become agented and won nation-wide competitions! 

Even if you rarely read your work to your group, listening to the critiquing of other people's work can benefit your own writing enormously. So, someone in your group always gets positive comments on their dialogue - listen carefully to see how you can improve yours. Ask them how they write it, compare it to your own. Maybe someone else often has great concepts but struggles to portray them in words. Take note on what other members are suggesting for ways in which to fix that. 

Concentrate on what your fellow writers home in on so that you can know what readers (listeners?) pick up on. Give a book to five people and they will all have different takes on it, even if they're all readers of the same genre, but there will be something that they all loved. Something that they all agree worked really well - character development, dialogue, plot twists, use of language. The same will be true of your own writing and a writing group will help you to discover what it is you do really well (yay - ego boost!) and the other things that you need to get right.

Depending on the group, you may also find yourself a writing buddy and these are invaluable. These are the people you can email your manuscript to and ask them to read the whole thing. Cover to cover. And they will be honest with you. But in a constructive way. And you will do the same thing for them. They might write in the same genre as you (helpful) or be really good at grammar (great for submission time) or just be really solid at critiquing, picking up holes in your plot or mistakes in your character development.

Your fellow writers will also clue you in to competitions and other groups that you can join such as SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) in the UK or RWA (Romance Writers of Australia) in Australia. AND they will encourage you to enter said competitions, help you to get your piece ready and celebrate with you when you're long-listed, short-listed and win (or commiserate if you don't and then motivate you to keep entering competitions so that one day you will be celebrating).

Plus, seeing your fellow writers morph from 'amateur' status to being a 'real' writer with an agent or writing credentials like being long listed for competitions really gives you the shove up the bottom that you need. There's nothing like your comrades-in-ink getting on with it and REALLY pursuing their publishing dreams to persuade you to sign up too. Who wants to be left behind, not even on the slush pile but murmuring about the fourth book you've written, when everyone else is surging ahead, climbing the ranks, earning their writing stripes (I think I've exhausted that metaphor now)? Not me. I'm off to polish up that synopsis and make my query letter sparkling. 

And after that, I'm going to find a critique group to join. Maybe one that doesn't have quite so many shining stars in it...

 Huge congratulations to the following AW writers 

with recent and thoroughly deserved successes:

Sally Poyton- long listed for the Times/Chicken House  2013 Children's Fiction Competition (and for SCBWI Undiscovered Voices 2011)

Nicki Thornton - long listed for the Times/Chicken House 2013 Children's Fiction Competition

Marissa De Luna - Newly agented writer!

Creative drafting?

So, I entered the Novelicious competition I mentioned in my last post. Eek. Now I have to wait three weeks to find out if I made it into the top 20 and, even if I didn't, I'm looking forward to reading the shortlisted entries and voting for my favourite! 

I also sent off another submission today. So now I'm waiting on three agencies... I changed my synopsis and cut out some just discovered superfluous info - Query shark is your go-to blog for what to put in and what to leave out. Be ruthless. You know, like a shark. 

Speaking of honing your writing, at the Abingdon Writers/Ali Shaw event last week, I was talking to Ali about the editing process and what a complete bore it can become. Turns out, there is a way to avoid the drudgery of what can feel like a completely non-creative part of the whole novel writing process. Leave some creativity back when writing your first draft. In other words, don't feel like you need to cram in every single character trait or scene setting as you get down the rough idea of your novel. If you leave some of the creative elements to subsequent drafts, you can prolong all the fun parts of writing, combining them with the editing process. 

So, your novel writing time line might look like this:

• Draft one - get the blasted ideas down onto paper with a rough narrative arc and a good idea of your characters
• Draft two - concentrate on developing your characters and honing your dialogue until it reads like real (albeit far more interesting and dialled down versions of) conversation
• Draft three - focus on scene setting. Use colour, smell, sound, beautiful similes, etc
• Draft four - make sure there aren't any continuity issues and add in/remove scenes that will help keep the pace of your novel moving. Check for 'show don't tell' incidences
• Draft five - final read through for grammar, spelling, silly mistakes, etc

Hurrah - the creative process is alive and well throughout ALL your drafts. Not that I have tried this method but it sounds as if it would work and, if you have ever drafted and redrafted until your eyes bled and you had no fingerprints left, perhaps it's worth a go just to keep you going on those lonely, miserable April nights when you would quite frankly rather be watching Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares or even (whisper it) *Made in Chelsea (or similarly awful 'reality' tv). 

I think I might try it with second MS, which is a complete mess as it started off as something entirely different (I blame NaNoWriMo) to what it is now becoming.  No doubt it will go through several incarnations before I settle on what it should be (which, for me, is wherever my main character wants to take it). 

Oh and you should all potter on over to this lady because she is very, very funny (although you might need to have kids to appreciate her properly). The Chardmeister thought he was going to have to section me I was laughing so much when I read her blog. Laughing so much I was crying. Proper nose running, mascara tracking down my cheeks crying with laughter. Which is good because that means I don't have to do any stomach exercises for another three weeks now. Yay Relentless Laundry lady!! 

*Disclaimer: I don't actually watch Made In Chelsea or any of those so-called reality tv shows. I mean, I like my trashy tv but it needs to be full of glamorous types doing crazy and unrealistic things like burying step fathers in shallow graves or shouty chefs cursing at stubborn and idiotic restaurant owners...

Guest blogger - get me!

So, I have a guest blog over at Mostly Books where I talk about forming a writing group and the event that said writing group, Abingdon Writers are holding this week as part of Abingdon Arts Festival 2012. An event with award winning author Ali Shaw,  no less! 

You may know him as the author of 'The Girl With Glass Feet' and the recently published 'The Man Who Rained'. He's a wonderfully imaginative author who writes modern day fairy tales in lyrical prose. His characters are always intriguing and a little bit damaged, the imagery he uses is sublime and the ideas (sunbeams that turn into canaries, people that are literally made of weather and girls that slowly turn to glass) are original and envy-evoking (for a writer). 

If you're around and about the South Oxfordshire area this Thursday night, come and hear Ali talking about his road to publication whilst having a glass of wine (you and him!) and then chat to Ali and the Abingdon Writers afterwards. We'll be at the Abingdon Library at 7.30pm and tickets are £4 (with £3 redeemable against a purchase on the night!) available from Mostly Books or on the door on the night.

I think I need new glasses...

They literally just fell off my face and onto my laptop, clattering into my tumbler of wine and making such a racket, the Chardmeister looked up from his game of zombies (some Xbox game thing). This is a rare occurrence - the looking up not the glasses coming off my face. I think these glasses could well be more than 6 or 7 years old. Time for a new pair? Perhaps. Do I have the actual time required to shop for a new pair? Definitely not. On account of my very narrow face, I struggle to find glasses that don't make me look like a fly. True story. Hence the fact that my current pair are so old; I really can't bear the thought of having to spend time trying on glasses in the kids department again.

On a more cheery note, Abingdon Writers had a good meeting last week - very productive. We have:

• decided to hold an event at Mostly books earlyish next year
• persuaded one of our members (a writer and an artist - deadly combination! Check out her website here) to create a flyer for us to put up in bookish type places
• made the decision to make our blog public
• discovered that we really should be keeping tabs on debut authors. Elementary, you might say. Yes, it probably should be but with kids, food shopping, housework, cooking, writing, editing, trying to have some sort of social life (mostly revolving around books. Tragique, moi?) and maintaining a reasonable level of personal hygiene, keeping a half closed eye out for publishing trends can easily be swept to the side with stuff like sending birthday and anniversary cards on time or remembering that you were supposed to phone your mum/sister/friend/the doctors/anybody really.

Following on from that meeting, which was a meeting to discuss boosting attendance numbers amongst other things (I had to leave half way through. Ironic, no?), I had a very productive dinner with two writing buddies where I stole one of my friends possible future life paths for a new novel and got the other one to judge the first ever writing competition for Abingdon Writers. There are real prizes (good ones too), which I will definitely not win one of seeing as I am rubbish at telling stories in less than 80,000 words. BUT, it will be a good writing exercise and will hopefully reinvigorate any of us who are mired in the murky depths of editing. Or stuck writing for NaNoWriMo. 

I'm supposed to have written 21,666 words but have only managed 3,000. Hmmm. That's really not good. There is a tiny spark of light though - the Chardmeister may be off work this week so he can look after Lady M for a couple of days whilst I attempt to catch up. Now that I have a real storyline to work off of, I think it can be done. No, I know it can be done. Must be positive and start believing in myself (and stop watching so much TV. When E4 finishes showing 'Greek' I think I'll be in a much better position for writing. No self control but some self awareness. It's a start).

               VS