INTERFERENCE TO MY WRITING--GOOD AND BAD by Marilyn Meredith

The worst first--Facebook has been a tremendous interference lately. I am really trying to avoid it as much as I can. I made the mistake of posting my opinions and was called names. And I got sick of reading posts from people I admired that were full of guttural and potty language. (Yes, the biggest offenders were writers.)  I ended up unfriending some, I don't need that icky stuff in my mind.

The good is we had another great-grand born into our family--makes 18 all together. And did you get that I said great-grand? Yes, my grandchildren are having babies--and one of my great-grands had one, and another great is going to be a father soon.

We have two great grands living with us, darling girls. Believe me, they do liven up our lives. Took time out the other day to play three games of UNO with the four year old. she's really good at it. (But I won all 3 games--a miracle, because she almost always wins. Probably beginner's luck)

Hubby is beginning to show his age (me too, for that matter, I've slowed down considerably) and when he goes to the doctor's I need to go too because he doesn't always get or remember what he's been told.

Because of my BIG family, I want to do things with them. After all, not too many kids have their grandma and great-grandma still around. I need to enjoy them all while I can.

And then there's the in-person promoting--that is necessary, fun, but takes time away from the writing.

I also volunteered to help reorganize a local writing group--which also will take some time away form my writing.

There are so many other things that I do, some writing related, some family related that take time away from what actual writing.

Oh, and there's the biggie--doing my income tax. Will start that soon too, once I'm sure I've gotten all the forms.

Okay, I've belly-ached enough, time to get back to work.

How many of you feel the same? Seems like I don't have near the time I used too.

Marilyn

One of the latest good distractions--Daniel Adam.

Critique Groups by Christine Duncan

I met an old friend for lunch the other day. She had recently moved back to the area and was searching for a critique group. Not so coincidentally, so am I. She had tried more than I had though. She kept coming up with groups that charged. Groups that wanted to include everyone from the lady who wants to write Haiku to the guy who thinks he wants to write a novel in the first person--without any description and with no capital letters or punctuation. And doesn't know if he wants to stick to some genre "formula." Many of the groups she had tried limited manuscripts from each writer to only once every 4 weeks or so. So you attend 3 meetings and critique and then on the fourth, you finally get some feedback. I have a few simple rules for critique. First, you limit group membership. Everyone can not possibly be good at all writing. Personally, I know diddly about Haiku. And not much more about biographies. So any group I'm a part of will limit itself to--at the minimum--fiction writing. I try to make sure that I join adult mystery fiction writing groups. I like romance, s/f, action, but can I critique it? I've never written it, that's for sure. My second rule of critique is equally simple. Everyone brings in 8-10 pages of their manuscript. Everyone brings enough copies for every person in the critique group. And when you get there, you exchange your copies. Everyone reads the same one first and then critiques that one. Then you read another, and critique until everyone gets some feedback. The author can not argue with the critique. And it's rude to leave after your stuff has been critiqued but before the group is done with the rest. Oh and my third rule of critique is probably the most important. I believe in the sandwich method. Say something nice, everyone needs to know what is good about their manuscript. Otherwise, they could just trash the whole thing. After you say something nice, you can make a suggestion about changes. Then say something else nice. No hatchet jobs. No sucking up either. Honesty is best. I love critique because I will get writing when I know a group is going to be seeing it. Life has been so busy these last few years, I've tried to fudge it by doing online critique or emailing my stuff to a writing buddy. It doesn't work as well for me. But a bad critique group is worse than none.