Learning from the Good, the Bad, and the Bloody Brilliant or Why We All Need Critique Groups

In an earlier incarnation as a young playwright, literary editor Sol Stein went on a writing fellowship in which he got to work with American theatre icon Thornton Wilder.

Thornton Wilder taught me ... the necessity of sitting through bad plays, to witness coughing and squirming in the audience, to have ears up like a rabbit to catch what didn't work, to observe how little tolerance an audience has for a mishap, ten seconds of boredom breaking an hour-long spell.

Solutions for Writers, Sol Stein, 1995

To this day, Stein urges his writing students

Once they have begun to master the craft, to read a few chapters of John Grisham's The Firm, or some other transient bestseller, to see what they can learn from the mistakes of writers who don't heed the precise meanings of the words they use. they also learn to read the work of literary prize-winners to detect the rare uncaught error in craft. What they are doing is perfecting their editorial eye and their self-editing talent, learning to read as a writer.

Critique groups perform this service for us. At critique groups we are learning not just to fix our work but to develop an instinctive ability to edit our own writing, the ability to see our work without the rose-tinted spectacles of a creator. We are "perfecting our editorial eye".

I wish someone told me that six years ago when I started writing. I made the mistake of listening to the advice of a (published) close friend:

Don't show your work to anyone. It will put you off writing.

But knowing what I know now, those two years of not showing my work to anybody was a complete waste of time. The fact is, writers who are put off by criticism are not cut out for publication. One only has to read the reader reviews on Amazon to realise that this writing business is not for the thin-skinned.

As Aussie Fantasy Author Ian Irvine says in his piece The Truth About Publishing:

Anyone who can be discouraged from writing should be.

Marketing Yourself On MySpace

This piece came out in today's Publishing News and since PN only keeps their articles online for a week, I am kindly reprinting it here for future reference:

THE PENGUIN DIGITAL Marketing team has joined forces with MySpace to discuss ways of effectively promoting new authors on the social networking site. The first novelist to be marketed through this medium is Joe Dunthorne, the 26- year-old UEA Creative Writing graduate who caused a bidding war over his debut novel, Submarine, which will be published in hardback by Hamish Hamilton on 7 February.
Dunthorne and Penguin Digital Marketing Director Anna Rafferty met with the MySpace team earlier this month to explore raising his MySpace profile.

Plans include adding film content of Dunthorne reading 'off-cuts' - passages he wrote for the novel that didn't make it in - and video diaries,including footage of the Submarine launch party, along with personal recordings of his thoughts and feelings on becoming a published author. The revamped page, which will run under Dunthorne's name, will be live in time for publication.

Rafferty said Dunthorne had “exactly the right demographic for a project like this; he already had lots of material as well as his own profile, and we'll be building on that. This isn't just a microsite for Submarine or about Oliver [the novel's teenage protagonist], it's about Joe and the story behind the book. MySpace can help us get the message to the right people and amplify it to their audience.”

A spokesperson for MySpace, which has 10 million unique users in the UK alone and 110 million worldwide, said: “We have the potential to specifically promote artists and Joe is the first author we're trying it with. There are editorial areas of MySpace where we can highlight interesting content - we are a social networking site but we're also a content platform, always looking for things that will interest our users. We see ourselves as being a place where things start, so it's a great place for Joe to promote himself.”

Dunthorne has already been hailed a 'Rising Star of 2008' by the Observer despite the novel not yet being published.

It will be interesting to see how MySpace enhances its marketing of authors — many YA authors have already cottoned onto the fact that MySpace is a good place to get close to their readers.

Some in fact have become very good at using MySpace to this end. There's the self-published fantasy author Steven Oliverez who used MySpace to drive sales of his book The Elder Staves to no. 25 on the Amazon bestseller list. Oliverez says:

Buzz creates more buzz. Since there's no marketing or publishing company behind teh book, it really helps to be online, able to connect with readers directly. Being on MySpace makes you seem more approachable, and that makes it a great tool for authors.

Searching MySpace for Joe Dunthorne's page, all I found was a 15 year old with the status tag: "I am very, very bored". Could it be my spelling? You can view Steven's MySpace page here. Warning: if you have sensitive hearing, turn the volume down first.

Agent No Longer Undercover

So many of you guys are asking me who my new agent is. But being an be incredibly kind and thoughtful person, I'm not revealing her ID on the blog to prevent her inbox from immediately being inundated with my fan mail. Not.

Which brings me to Daphne Unfeasible.

Followers of Maureen Johnson's hilarious blog have for years enjoyed Maureen's unfeasible tales about her agent, Daphne Unfeasible - here pictured with MJ, as usual, incognito, hiding behind Free Monkey (Free Monkey is a monkey Maureen acquired, free, on her travels, who is a kind of sidekick, soothsayer, companion and who once kept a travel diary).


Anyway before I digress further, Maureen is currently blogging writer in residence at the wonderful Inside a Dog website ("Outside a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read." Groucho Marx) and has just revealed Daphne Unfeasible's true identity. Daphne Unfeasible is actually Kate Schafer and Kate Schafer is getting married, moving to Colorado and opening the KT Literary Agency which is now open to submissions from middle grade and YA authors!

And with Daphne unveiled, Kate has also started blogging at Ask Daphne - go ahead, ask her anything you like about agents and getting published!