Sandra’s Miscellany

I have one, and it’s wonderful. Not because we all got along okay from the get-go or because we’re all on the same wavelength. It’s wonderful because we worked together long enough to get a sense of each other’s strengths, and now play to them.

I’ve been in critique groups where I arrived feeling my stomach already clenched in knots. It took a few weeks of that before our group dissolved, for which I was profoundly grateful. I simply didn’t get along with one of the members, who wanted to “fix” my writing voice, but didn’t really know how to get out of that situation.

Up until then, most of my “critique group” experience had been more along the lines of incarceration or forced labor. In grad school, most of my critiques came in the classroom workshop. A group of students signed up for a poetry, fiction writing, or personal essay workshop, and we were stuck with each other for a semester. So there was a sense of “get along or deal with it” each term, and sometimes it worked out fine and sometimes it sucked bad.

I’m writing an article about working in critique groups and am curious about other folks’ experiences.

What have your experiences been? Have you had good groups? Have you never been in a group? Do you prefer to work one-on-one or in a group of four or more? What do you love/hate about your group?

Please post anonymously or send me your notes directly.