My fiance and I went to sit in with a writer's group tonight. We were both crossing our fingers for it not to be a bunch of crap-ass amateurs arguing over fluctuating tense-usage and the overuse of adverbs versus so-called creative freedom. Sure, you can have all the creative freedom you want, but no amount of freedom changes the difference between good writing and bad writing. It is a CRAFT and must be learned correctly <==eeeeek! An adverb!
Anyway, it was okay. Aside from a few things we didn't care for–like the praise to criticism ratio. Granted, there were a few pieces that I thought were perfect the way they were, but the ones that weren't were not really addressed. When I say I want a critique, I am basically enviting you to tear me up. If you find a mistake, bring it to my attention STAT. The surest way to irritate me is to simply say, "Oh, that was good", and then leave it at that. I don't learn anything, I don't change anything, I don't grow as a writer.
Also, a couple of times they spent like five minutes discussing some irrelevant detail of someone's work, while ignoring some bigger grammatical flub. The first time was on whether or not one lady should keep putting two spaces after each period or whether or not publishers would make her reformat it herself. The other one cocerned an awkward phrase about whether or not men knew as much about cooking spices as women and whether or not modern day readers would relate to "Sarah" sending "Tom" to the store for "spices men wouldn't know about". It was kind of dumb and tedious, really. Who the hell cares? Move ON already…
I still want to go again, though the fiance was not impressed. Truthfully, I'm kind of glad. I only asked him to go because I was afraid of making him feel left out, but I'd rather have this without him. My writing has always been soley MY WRITING and I'd rather not have to hear his two cents about it all the time. His opinions about it are just not objective enough. Also, I need my away time, where I can be just me and not half of a couple.
