On Critique Groups and Feedback

I’ve had fortunate luck in learning and giving feedback on pieces. When I lived in Israel, there was a poetry critique group that, while it was more of a “you finish, we applaud politely” kind of place, people did provide feedback. They also had a yearly English-language chapbook, and the poetry quality was pretty good. A separate tiny group met in my apartment every month or so and sat and wrote more than workshopped, but I got to hear feedback from potential readers, at least.

Fast forward to moving to Austin in the early 90s. There was an insular group called Turkey City that met, but I had no “in” to get involved. There was — and still is — Slugtribe. For a baby fiction writer (I’d started transitioning to short story and novel form), it was great: bring up to 5k words with lots of copies, everyone reads silently, then there’s a critiquing discussion, and the author gets all the written feedback when it’s over.

My first time presenting, I brought a chunk of a manuscript I’d been working on for several years. I was proud of it, my friends who’d read it liked what they’d seen, and the prose was perfect. Looking back on it, the critiquing was gentle–but it took me a few months to summon the courage to go to another meeting. For people new to critiquing, bringing their lovely children for review can be traumatic. But persevere I did, and I’m grateful for the time spent in the group.

While Slugtribe was and is awesome (thanks in large part to Wendy Wheeler!), it’s an open group, so the critique members consist of those who show up that night. Ditto for the quality of the writing, which ranged from awesome to the neophyte. (Slugtribe supports several now-published alums, including Patrice Sarath, Paige E. Ewing, Nicky Drayden, Elizabeth Moon, and the prolific Marshall Ryan Maresca,) I was just starting to write A Day at the Zoo and wanted feedback from folks with more experience and, hopefully, published experience.

I started looking for something at a more professional critique level by mid-2015. One member linked me up with group she was in, where most members were game designers past or present and some very sharp critiquers. And most published authors of one kind or another. This is a closed group, meaning one needs to be invited, and there are the usual hazing and mystic ceremonies to bring one in. Or not. It meets weekly for several hours, so there’s continuity of people’s writing as well as the critiquers. And cookies, let’s not forget those.

The pandemic moved the group from its very comfortable living room to discord, a new experience for many. It allowed us, however, to cast a net for members broadly. We have about a dozen active members, and we’ve been privileged to provide feedback on manuscripts that are now on sale at a bookstore near you or online.

The word I use to describe it is “safe.” Not safe as in gentle criticism–that’s a blunt, honest, and sometimes puzzling thing. It’s safe because we can bring our pieces, whatever the quality of editing or genre, and not feel attacked or personally criticized. And when the critiquing gets rough, it might feel that way in a group where we don’t know each other comfortably well. We met en masse for the first time at the last ArmadilloCon in Austin. Eleven folks, many meeting for the first time. It was lovely. And the critiquing was no less rigorous that week.

All this is to say, if you’re serious about your writing, don’t believe your own press as to how good the material is; find a group, any group at first, to get feedback. There are online communities like Scribophile, which have “get critiques as you give them” bartering, but they also have whole-novel sessions with a set group of people. Like Slugtribe, this is an open forum, but it’s easy to read another author’s critiquing of other work to see if their feedback is relevant to your writing.

All this to say, there’s an article about critique groups at Authors Publish that might give you a good look at this essential part of writing: https://authorspublish.com/lectures/the-art-of-getting-feedback-on-your-writing/.

Happy Holidays!

Interviewing for a Publicist/Marketeer

I’ve got a couple of projects in various states. My detective series hasn’t, after all this time, had any budgeting advertising or publicity. Recently I had a couple of contacts in the content creation/marketing/publicity field, and with some money saved up, I’m planning on hiring one, at least on a trial basis, to see what paid professionals can do where the scattershot efforts of an author have not moved the needle much at all.

Old Man’s Wakeup

⁨Wow, this is actually… “good!” (For some values of the word).

I didn’t have any Red Bull left in the house, didn’t want to drive, didn’t want to boil water…Just wanted to get my day (and billing) started. So…I made this oddity:

Ingredients:

  • 2 tsp nescafe
  • 1 tsp psyllium (artificially orange flavored, of course)
  • 12 oz. fresca
  • 1C water

Directions:

  1. in a mason jar, add the dry + water
  2. Shake until there’s no particulates
  3. Add Fresca. When it’s all in, shake again and wait a few secs.
    Voila.

Disgusting sounding? Yes. Getting my fiber and caffeine 1st thing in the morning? Also yes. Tastes like orange red bull espresso.⁩

And now, back to the world at hand…

ArmadilloCon Cometh!

ArmadilloCon, the Austin-area Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror convention, will be in town September 6-8.

Like every year, there’s a writing workshop on Friday morning — if you’re interested, you’ll need to register for next year’s conference as this one’s locked and ready. I’m one of the instructors; it’s an amazing way to get quality feedback in a supportive environment.

I’ll be moderating a few panels, and my critique group is hosting a panel, splitting the time reading our works and discussing how a critique group works. Look me up if you’re there!

On LLM (first of many, I’m guessing)

I’m not a fan of the current qualifications of Chat-GPT and its ilk. Three examples:

  1. writers I know are suing for copyright infringement because Google, MS et al have slurped up their novels into their LLMs.
  2. I’m researching a science fiction book and needed facts on oxygen candles (used, for example, in submarines to produce oxygen). Asked the same prompt and got two answers. “…The amount of oxygen…[is] around 1 to 2 pounds of oxygen per hour…” and, “The total amount [is]…in the range of tens to hundreds of liters per hour…”
  3. The prompt for the image above was “a jewish israeli and palestinian arab stab each other each holding a bloody knife.” It was a test, not a wish or political statement. I wanted to see what the AI would “imagine.” I can’t tell which is who. Forgetting the knives, they’re both wearing combat webbing (the one on the left has what looks to be a belt). How could it dream this when I specified knife? Is this what it creates when prompted for either?

Unfortunately, it’s going to get better. And while this might clear the cruft of Photoshop manipulators from the creative industry, it makes me worry about what dark “hallucinations” AIs might be having.

Sciencing Fiction Be Hard

I like my science fiction accurate. I mean, Star Trek is fantasy, Star Wars is a space opera, and Firefly is a space western. The Expanse, with a couple of exceptions (and excepting the protomolecule and all that jazz), is pretty accurate. That’s what I look for.

So…last week, my critique group was working on two characters in a lunar lava tube with limited suit oxygen. “But there are oxygen candles,” geeknerd me said. But chemistry, but physics, But real rocket engineers in the critique group.

To the internet I go, trying to figure out how heavy a candle needed to be to provide oxygen for one person for eight hours. and what would be the gas volume for oxygen and how would a space suit accommodate the extra pressure. To say nothing of heat production… Sometimes there are bunny trails, sometimes there are rabbit holes, and sometimes…dragon lairs. Oh, and don’t bother Chat-GPT: to the same prompt, I got two different answers:
1. Asked the same prompt and got two answers. “…The amount of oxygen…[is] around 1 to 2 pounds of oxygen per hour…,” and
2. “The total amount [is]…in the range of tens to hundreds of liters per hour…”

In other words, GIGO, one the first computer acronyms that I learned many years ago.

Watching a Randal Munroe interview was cathartic. Fractal science questioning and answering are what he lives for. (And, also, harassing Commander Hadfield about how a T-Rex would fly on top of an apparent 737s.) Buy his books; What If 2 is brilliant!

Randall’s got more time than I to turn BTUs into thermal conductivity for surface regolith on the Lunar South Pole and how long the tether from the candle to the spike on the surface could be before the cable melted. The solution to all the above? Write out the oxygen candles and have the characters’ situations be more dire. It’s good to be a god. The surviving characters will thank me.

Cartoon Copyright (C) Randall Munroe, https://xkcd.com/1047, used according to site guidelines.

Trigger Warning: Trigger Warnings

When Sophie’s Choice was released, I went with a date to see it. I didn’t check reviews; I just heard about a great actress. I spent the last half of the movie sobbing and scared the bejeezus out of my date (especially since I had to drive her home). My mother had told me that story, in gory detail, from her multiple personal experiences with the Nazi “selektion” at Auschwitz. Cue “triggering.”

At the last ArmadilloCon, there was a spirited set of discussions, on and off-panel, regarding trigger warnings. Even with the book title “The Property of Blood, ” the author was urged to use a trigger warning for violence.

As someone who’s lived with PTSD for most of their lives and has had the cinematic Vietnam vet flashback, I don’t see it this way. Caveat Emptor needs to be a much finer, more granular warning, if at all. What triggers one person may be fine for another. And where’s the limit? Do we warn if there are giant spiders in the novel? What if there’s non-consensual, non-sexual touching? The echo of trauma from a bully’s beating can be very painful for some readers, but how does one alert the public?

What Ilona said, mostly. But also, if there’s a large amount of specific violence such as anti-<abuse> that’s not on the title or dust jacket, it’s probably not a big deal to add a warning on the back cover just to give a heads-up. My $0.02, IMHO, YMMV.

ArmadillonCon 46 Approacheth!

I’ll be at the Austin-based con this weekend. There’s an amazing panoply of panels and events that are amazing. You can register on-line, and it’s reasonably priced. There’s no ComicCon hype and not much cosplay, but there are many Austin and area authors in the SF, F, Horror, and even a little MM space.

Dogs, Tricks, New. Damnit!

I’m a recalcitrant writer when it comes to technology, which is funny considering I’ve been neck-deep in emerging technologies for, um, four decades?

It took me over ten years to slide from Word to Scrivener. I still think it’s got a clunky UI, complex more than necessary. But when writing 90k-150k novels spanning many chapters, it made sense. “Compiling” the manuscript to Word or other formats is an excruciating pain in the ass. But here I am.

Grammarly has been around for years, and I’ve scoffed at using such a crutch. But, lured by claims linking it to AI technology (a whole other post, but let’s not go there now), I signed up for the free version.

I’ve paid the $120/year subscription after spending 2 hours taking a story I deemed finished and being marketed through its wringer. I. Am. Humbled. Not bad: 50 or so corrections for 6,300 words. I didn’t accept about a fifth of the suggestions; they were inappropriate for the dialog or tone I was looking for. However, when I looked at the corrections I made in one of my writing groups and read their feedback on my scenes, it was clear that, had I run them through this tool, I’d have far more effective critiquing.

So I’ve got a new trick, one that’ll help my writing sit up and beg.