Critique Partners

Tomorrow I'm meeting for coffee (or, in my case, hot chocolate because I'm already quite over stimulated, thank you very much) with a friend I met in a writers' group. We met twice a month, took work home to read, discussed it at meetings, etc. The usual thing. I was the only published writer in the group, and I did miss the networking type chat that you get from meeting with other writers who are at your same rung on the ladder. (I don't know how much networking I'd be able to do with the authors of international bestsellers.) But several of these people were very fine readers, and the friend I'm going to see tomorrow actually put her finger right on what was wrong with the picture book manuscript I was working on that eventually became A Girl, a Boy, and a Monster Cat. The manuscript needed to be A Girl, a Boy, and a Monster Cat, not a picture book.

Since I'm seeing Lynda tomorrow morning, I have writers' groups on my mind this evening. So I was interested to see Becky Levine's blog post Critique Partners--Why Start With One? In it, she talks about building a critique group and suggests you start with just one critique partner.

It's an interesting idea.

Training Report: In spite of another chaotic day, I managed to get two segments done for the 365 Story Project. The need to report here does force me to try harder.