The Blessing of Having a Great Critique Group

I joined ACFW March, 2014. Almost immediately, I signed up for Scribes, their large critique group, and started submitting one of my stories. Going from a “loner” writer to this was quite a wakeup call, and I was quickly caught up on a lot of “rules” that seemed to be expected. My manuscript improved, and I started making friends.

Four months later, I was invited to join two smaller critique groups. The choice was put before me, and I am so grateful for the one the Lord helped me make!

Over the next little while "Love Revealed" was chosen as our name and a critique group was formed by Marion Ueckermann, Heidi McCahan, Janet Ferguson, Laura Hodges Poole and myself. At the time three of us had been published and the rest of us were still "slushing" it for the most part.

Marion had her "Passport to Romance" novella, Helsinki Sunrise:

And Heidi debuted with Unraveled:
And Laura had a short story included in an anthology. 
There were other minor publications, but this gives you an idea of where we were at. 

Introductions were made, and we started officially submitting ~4000 words/week to each other. Month after month we submitted, slowly working through everything from full novels to short stories. Over the past two years we have laughed together, patted each-other’s backs, felt each other’s disappointments and joys, and told some great stories. We each have our strengths and weaknesses (like my ability to leave out articles and other small words--honestly I don't understand how it happens!) and have rounded out and deepened each other’s stories.

When signing a couple of contracts in the fall, it struck me that everything I have sent through my critique group has been published or contracted—something that wouldn’t have happened without the assistance of these writers, their insights and their kind honesty.

In celebration of two years together, I would like to share some of this group's accomplishments:

Contests:

Two ACFW Genesis Semi-finalists

ACFW First Impressions Finelist 

Love Inspired's Blurb to Book- one of us made it to the second round, and one of us made it to the final round (both of us received full manuscript requests!) 

Storming The Short Story Contest hosted by the Texas chapters of ACFW: we dominated the romance category with a win and honorable mention (both stories were published!)

ACFW Virginia Chapter's Short Story Contest- A win!

Winner of the  Idahope Writers Contest 

Also, one of us just hit USA Today Bestselling list with a collaborated box set!

Publications: 

Short stories:

  

That last one holds two of our stories! :) 

Novellas:

Full Novels:

Currently we also have another four novels contracted for publication, and even more in the works! 

One of our books will soon be available in Norwegian, as well!

Not bad for two years.

I look forward to many more years writing with these wonderful ladies as I know my writing would not be what it is without them. Thank you!

What has your experience been with critique groups?

In case you want a closer look at any more of those great titles, here are the Amazon links. :)

Marion Ueckermann
Heidi McCahan
Laura Hodges Poole
Janet Ferguson 
Angela K Couch 

Angela K Couch is an award-winning author for her short stories, and a semi-finalist in ACFW’s 2015 Genesis Contest. As a passionate believer in Christ, her faith permeates the stories she tells. Her martial arts training, experience with horses, and appreciation for good romance sneak in there, as well. Angela lives in Alberta, Canada with her “hero” and three munchkins. Visit her at www.angelakcouch.com, or follow on Twitter or Facebook!

MY ONE AND ONLY CRITIQUE PARTNER--by Christine Lindsay

Today, I’m showing off my dear friend and writing critique partner, the Award-winning Author, Rachel Phifer. Rachel & I work with only one critique partner on all our individual books. As you read the following , you'll understand why I rejoice in such a wonderful writing partner. And also I might add a bit of bragging rights---her Carol Nominated novel below The Language of Sparrows---ta...da...I was Rachel's critique partner on that book. Can you blame me for feeling proud? 

First Fruits of Time by Rachel Phifer

MORE TIME has been the cry of my adult life. My days are a mad rush through work, dinner, chores, raising my kids and writing. I search out empty spaces around those things to meet with God. Sure, I have faith, but too often, it’s a limping, scrawny faith.

A while back I began to take a closer look at the Christian biographies on my shelf. These people who made an impact for Christ didn’t fit God into their day. They gave him the first-fruits of their

day, and their to-do list fit around that. 

Martin Luther said the busier his day the more time he needed to spend in prayer. Mother Teresa required her nuns to spend a solitary hour in prayer and another hour together in prayer before heading out to the streets of Calcutta. 

George Müller, the man who provided for 10,000 orphans without ever asking for a shilling spent at least an hour in prayer, and David Wilkerson gave up his news hour to pray shortly before heading to New York to work with gang members. The Ten Booms, who sheltered Jews during WWII had morning and evening prayer as a family. Every Christian I read about mentioned spending hours each day in prayer. Hours. 

No limping, scrawny faith for them.

I looked around for people I knew in real life and noticed an older couple at my church. They prayed together for an hour in the morning before going to work and for an hour together after dinner. The man prayed during his lunch hour too. My first thought was: what do they pray about for so long? And day after day? But my second thought was I want what they have. Because love and peace shone out of their faces.

What’s the point of short prayers and small faith? It’s mundane and totally uninspiring. I want God to fill my life to bursting with whatever He wants to fill it with. I want Him to fill my day with Himself most of all.

As a new year rolls in, I’ve decided to give prayer as the first fruit of my day. If that means hour-long prayers at 4 a.m., good. If that means the have-to list takes a backseat, excellent. Because I want a large, God-here-and-present-life. I want a life-lit-by-the-flames-of-His-Spirit-life.

About Rachel's Award-Winning Novel inspired by her search for the spirit-filled life.

The Language of Sparrows:

Brilliant and fluent in too many languages to count, 15-year-old Sierra Wright can't seem to communicate what is important to her in any language. Though April Wright stubbornly keeps an upbeat attitude about her daughter's future, she has let her own dreams slip away. Just across the bridge lives old Luca, scarred from his time in a Romanian gulag years before. Though he has seemingly given up on people, Sierra is drawn to him despite his prickly edges.

No one else is comfortable with the unpredictable old man spending time alone with Sierra, not even Luca's son. Yet it is this unconventional relationship that will bring two families together to form friendships and unearth their family stories, stories that just might give them all the courage to soar on wings toward a new future.

ABOUT RACHEL PHIFER:

As the daughter of missionaries, Rachel Phifer grew up in Malawi, South Africa and Kenya, and managed to attend eleven schools by the time she graduated from high school. Books, empty notebooks and cool pens were her most reliable friends as she moved from one place to another. She holds a B.A. in English and psychology, and lives in Houston with her family.

Website: www.rachelphifer.com

Book link: http://www.amazon.com/The-Language-Sparrows-Rachel-Phifer/dp/0781410487

ABOUT CHRISTINE LINDSAY

Website www.christinelindsay.com

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.

Dropbox for writers

Hi! Lucy here. Today I want to share a useful tool I’ve found to help with my writing.

Dropbox

Available from www.dropbox.com, it is an online cloud storage facility … and yet so much more. Available across Mac, PC, Android, and iPhone platforms, this app can backup, sync, and share across all of these devices.

Here are some of the ways I use it for both writing and personal use:

To backup everything to do with my writing (this includes word docs, pictures, videos, Evernote notes, sticky notes etc. I collect), along with my entire Documents folder, iTunes and iPhoto folders. They all now live in Dropbox. This means that I can access a personal file from my Document folder while at the bank or while away from home, I can pull up my current WIP and keep working whenever I have 5mins spare from my phone or tablet, I can sync my music from my iTunes folder to my phone/tablet without having to physically hook the two up with USB cables etc.

Sync docs and photos to and from tablets/iPad’s without having to connect them. E.g., my daughter wants to do her PowerPoint presentation for school on her Android tablet and then either print it off or stick it on a USB stick (a problem because tablets don’t have USB slots). She can complete her work, save it to Dropbox, which I can then access on my MacBook Pro and print etc.

Store large amounts of photos taken by mobile phones etc. Early last year I went on a research trip to Winton and Augathella in outback Queensland. I took LOTS of photos with my HTC 1XL mobile phone. So many that I worried about running out of room on the internal storage…. But I had no problems because my phone automatically backs up to Dropbox. So as soon as it had synced I could delete them from my phone.

Share folders with family and critique partners. This is one of THE most useful parts of Dropbox: its ability to share folders. I have three shared folders—one with my critique partners (which we drop our docs we want critiqued, interesting research/craft stuff we find, etc. I also share one with my parents which makes sharing grandchildren photos MUCH easier. And then I share one with Dave, the love of my life. Documents, photos, videos etc that we need/want to share all go in that folder, which streamlines life for us.

Sharing files too large for an email or videos too big for a text message. This shares a file from a folder that isn’t shared, allowing the other person to see only that file and not the contents of the entire folder. I’ve done this on several occasions now. E.g.: I had a long video of my son riding a motorbike that I wanted to share with my sisters, but was far too large to send through a normal MMS/text message. No problem, I just shared the Dropbox link to that video through a text—which they could view on their smartphones quite easily.

Recoverable files. If I delete a file (like a book! Argh! And yes, I’ve done this—don’t ask!), or even just a picture, it’s recoverable. Dropbox doesn’t permanently delete a file until three months after I ‘delete’ it from my device. All I have to do is go online to my Dropbox account and restore that file to my folder.

I just love the peace of mind that having everything backed up with Dropbox brings. If my laptop dies/is stolen, then everything is safe in the cloud storage. I haven’t lost anything because it isn’t just on my laptop/tablet.

So, consider looking into using an online storage device like Dropbox (there are others out there, but I’m not familiar with them). It’s free, you get quite a few gig of storage, especially if you connect more than one device. I now have 77GB which I use seamlessly across my MacBook Pro, my Samsung tablet, daughter’s iPad, and my HTC phone.

Lucy Morgan-Jones is a stay-at-home mum to four precocious children by day and a snoop by night, stalking interesting characters through historical Colorado, and writing about their exploits.

She enjoys meeting new people from all over the world and learning about the craft of writing. When she can be separated from her laptop, she is a professional time waster on facebook, a slave to the towering stack of books on her bedside table, and a bottler, preserving fruit the old fashioned way so she can swap recipes and tips with her characters.

Her home is in Australia where she does not ride a kangaroo to the shops, mainly because four children won’t fit. ;)

Represented by Chip MacGregor of MacGregor Literary, she is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers, and Romance Writers of America.

Growing with your critique partners

by Narelle Atkins 

Over the years I’ve been blessed by the friendship and critiques from a number of romance writers. I’ve discovered some critique relationships are for a season, and others evolve into long term friendships. 

I met Suzie Johnson (aka Susan Diane Johnson) through the Faith, Hope and Love (FHL) Chapter of RWA. Suzie came second in the 2007 Touched by Love Contest short contemporary category and I placed third. When Suzie joined the FHL email group, I sent her a welcome email and our friendship was born. The following year we met in person at the RWA Conference in San Francisco, and we stayed in touch via email. Suzie lives in Washington and I live in Australia. 

In 2010 I started critiquing with Suzie and her friend, Stacy Monson, from Minnesota. I knew Stacy from the FHL email groups, and the three of us started exchanging chapters for critique. Stacy and I write contemporary romance. Suzie writes contemporary and historical romance. We discovered we each had different strengths in terms of what we picked up in our critiques. We were honest and tried to highlight both strengths and weaknesses in our stories. 

We have shared each other’s trials, frustrations and triumphs. Suzie and Stacy are dear friends, and our critiquing relationship has evolved over time. We brainstorm proposals and plot points when we’re stuck. We are now reading each other’s mss and looking at higher level editing and writing craft issues rather than line by line critiquing. 

Last year Suzie and I travelled together to the ACFW conference in Indy. I spent a few days in Washington with Suzie before we caught The Empire Builder train from Seattle to Chicago. A highlight of the train trip was meeting Stacy for the first time on the train station platform in St Paul, Minneapolis. We only had ten minutes together because the train was running late, but I treasure those precious minutes when the three of us were together in person. 

2014 is an exciting year for us. We have 7 new books releasing this year, including debut books from Stacy and I. 

Suzie’s second book, True North, is releasing this week. I’m so excited to see this story in print, having watched it evolve over the last few years. And, Suzie also has her first historical romance, Sweet Mountain Music, releasing in May 2014. I love this story, and I was delighted to see the setting in real life during our train trip to Chicago. 

Stacy’s debut book, One of Me, releases in June 2014. I’m thrilled for Stacy, and I’ve loved watching this story develop over the last couple of years. 

Stacy and I are also blogging together with ICFW member Valerie Comer on the new Inspy Romance group blog. http://www.inspyromance.com/ If you’re a fan of contemporary romance, please stop by and visit with us. 

Have you been blessed by critique partners? I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences.

 

NARELLE ATKINS writes contemporary inspirational romance and lives in Canberra, Australia. She sold her debut novel, set in Australia, to Harlequin's Love Inspired Heartsong Presents line in a 6-book contract. 

Her debut book, Falling for the Farmer, will be released next week on February, 4 2014, followed by The Nurse's Perfect Match in May 2014, The Doctor's Return in August 2014, and an untitled release in November 2014.

Narelle blogs regularly with Australasian Christian Writers. http://australasianchristianwriters.blogspot.com/ 

She is also a co-founder of the Australian Christian Readers Blog Alliance (ACRBA). http://acrba.blogspot.com/ 

The new Inspy Romance blog officially launches next week on February 3. A pre-launch Q&A and giveaway is starting this week on Wednesday. http://www.inspyromance.com/

Website: http://www.narelleatkins.com 
Blog: http://narelleatkins.wordpress.com 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NarelleAtkinsAuthor 
Twitter: @NarelleAtkins https://twitter.com/NarelleAtkins