Thursday, March 26, 2015

Keeping our own writing counsel

Last year, I began meeting with a younger author at her request, in order to help bring her dream of writing her first work of non-fiction to reality. Her eagerness to learn was obvious from the outset. Whenever I referred to a particular book about writing, she would note its name and want to borrow or buy it. Whenever I mentioned an online writers’ group she might like to join or a writer’s blog she might like to check out, that is what she did. And when I told her about a Christian writers’ conference here in Australia, she was among the first to book in.

My young friend is a delight. I know she respects me and listens to my suggestions. But, much more importantly, she has a deep love for the Lord and is passionate about wanting her own experiences in life to count for the Kingdom. Believing God wants her to write her book, she has worked hard at mapping it all out systematically in a way I have never done with any of my own and has now completed some of her early chapters. I am in awe of her enthusiastic and thorough approach to it all.

But there is another way in which our writing approaches differ. I have discovered my friend is quite happy to show these early chapters to her writing group and to others who are prepared to critique her work, in order to receive as much feedback as possible. As we talked about this, she explained she has always been a collaborative worker, willing to use the skills and gifts of others to get things done. So she is happy to take on board any comments and criticisms, even at this early stage. I, on the other hand, cringed when I heard what she was doing. I felt it could be a little confusing for her and perhaps even hamper her from developing her own writing style.

But then I began to question myself. I had never shown my work to others in those early stages at least. Was it merely my pride and my inability to receive criticism that had caused me to keep my work to myself until it was almost complete? Imagine my recent relief then, when, on reading Dorothea Brande’s book, Becoming A Writer, written way back in 1934, I came across the following in a section entitled ‘Keep your own counsel’:
When you have completed a fair first draft you can, if you like, offer it for criticism and advice; but to talk too early is a grave mistake.  (p 52, 1981 Tarcher/Penguin edition)
The author reasoned that, if we share our work with others while it is still taking shape, we have already received their responses and will be less motivated to complete all the developing and polishing our manuscript needs. Perhaps this then accounted, in part at least, for my reticence in sharing my own work too early and the shudder that ran through me when my friend told me how freely she was showing those early chapters to others.

How about you? Have you found it is good to show your manuscript to critique partners early on so you can fix any key problems? Or do you, like me, prefer to ‘keep your own counsel’ until that first draft is complete?

Jo-Anne Berthelsen lives in Sydney, Australia. She holds degrees in Arts and Theology and has worked as a high school teacher, editor and secretary, as well as in local church ministry. Jo-Anne is passionate about touching hearts and lives through both the written and spoken word. She is the author of six published novels and one non-fiction work, Soul Friend: the story of a shared spiritual journey. Jo-Anne is married to a retired minister and has three grown-up children and four grandchildren. For more information, please visit www.jo-anneberthelsen.com.


8 comments:

  1. Both my husband, who also is a writer, and I tend to keep our developing writing to ourselves until we've got something finished. Sharing it before it's done reduces the internal pressure to complete it.

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    1. Thanks, Karen--it's reassuring for me to hear there are other authors out there who like to wait a little at least before sharing their work with others. It has been a new thought to me that sharing our work can reduce the internal pressure to complete our manuscripts but that makes sense to me as I think more about it.

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  2. Hi Jo-Anne,
    Like you, I never show those early chapters to anybody. It can lead to confusion, if we get too much differing feedback based on readers' personalities, and also it keeps my momentum high if I have secrets for the long term of the project.
    However, your post reminds me that we authors differ from others in our styles and approaches.

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    1. Yes, this experience has certainly been a good lesson to me on how different our approaches may be as writers.

      I think those two reasons you gave, Paula, for not showing your early chapters to anyone, sound so sensible to me--although, as we have said, writers have different ways of doing things. I wonder if it harder to hand the early chapters of a developing novel around though, where were there are unfolding secrets, as you mention. Lots of food for thought!

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  3. Thanks Jo-Anne,
    You're confirming what I've begun to suspect. When I wrote Strength Renewed, I sent some of the chapters to my critique book, and I found it helpful. But then the editor requested some new chapters and I didn't have time to wait for critique. Sure enough, they were accepted with very little change.
    I'm currently writing a non-fiction book and I'm sending in the chapters one at a time as well. Some of the advice I think has been helpful, but other comments are causing me to 2nd guess what I'm doing.
    I need to really pray about this. What purpose, if any, do you see for a critique group? And yet I have found them helpful on many occasions. (It is very time consuming though, as my group is big--and so it involves me doing crits of their work as well.)

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    1. I feel for you in this, Shirley--and I would go to prayer about it all, just as you have decided to do.

      Re the value of a critique group, I have never worked with one as such, but I do have at least four people who read each of my manuscripts when I have completed the rough draft and I take each of their feedback seriously. But they are not authors so I am not tied into doing the same for them in return--although I might help them in some other way! I doubt my whole writing journey would ever have started at all if I had belonged to a critique group back in the beginning, as I was so unsure of myself I probably would have second-guessed myself into oblivion! But the other side of the coin is that, at times, my manuscript readers have saved me from making big mistakes and assumptions in what I have written. I guess somewhere along the line, Shirley, we have to have enough confidence that God has called us to write whatever we're writing and is leading us in the whole process and also enough confidence in ourselves--at least enough to trust our own judgment and be prepared to stand by what we have written. As a couple of my manuscript readers have said to me in the past, 'It's YOUR book, after all!'

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  4. Hi Jo-Anne, I brainstorm proposals with my critique partners but I don't usually show them the early versions of my chapters.

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    1. So interesting to hear how writers go about receiving or not receiving feedback etc--thanks, Narelle. Even brainstorming proposals with critique partners sounds very brave to me--I am beginning to suspect I'm altogether too 'private' a writer!

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