Looking at Critique Groups - Janet Lane Walters

In many ways, writing is a lonely game. The people you meet are often those you've created on paper. Telling stories that are produced on paper or electronically takes time and being alone. Trying to write when surrounded by people carrying on conversations can be difficult if not impossible but writing in a vacuum is also difficult. One needs feedback from others. Just sending off a story and waiting for an editor to comment can be hard. So what can you do?

Writers often band together with other writers to share their works and receive comments from their fellow writers to help. But critique groups may not always work for one author or another. I've belonged to three in my long career as a writer. The first one was centered only in poetry and while I learned there things like rhythm and word choice there was no appreciation of my prose. Since it was the only group in town, I remained and my fellow writers at least were supportive of what I was doing but they didn't help me hone my craft. Then we moved.

I joined a second critique group who said they were interested in both poetry and prose. Problem was they were interested in intellectual prose. I wrote genre fiction, stories with happy endings. My characters had goals and motives and coflicts that could happen to writers in every day life. Did I learn here. Yes and no. I learned I was never going to write "literary" fiction, but some of the authors the quoted as being wonderful didn't write "literary" fiction in the days when they were producing. I also had fun. Doing poetry readings in NYC and meeting people whose poetry was recognized was a great experience. I also had some poems published. My fiction suffered in some ways and grew stronger in others.

Then I found a third critique group. While the writers were mainly focused on romance they could give pointers on some of the other areas I was exploring. The group formed in 1990 has continued and is still active today. Actually we meet at my house and read from five to ten pages and do a round robin critique. Not all the original members still belong. Some of them have gone on to become best-selling authors. Some have moved and some have dropped out of the writing game. I always wonder about the strong writers who simply gave up. Was it something the group was not giving them or was it a fear of faila fear of success. Through this group I discovered electronic publishing years before it became the boom it is now. And I think a lot about those people who left the writing game. But each time one of the members or former member's career takes off I feel inspired and wonder if somehow I have helped them move forward in their careers the way they have helped me.



Seducing the doctor is a new release. Pursuing Dr. West, Gemstones and Healwoman are on sale for another few days. Escape is also on sale.

Diane Scott Lewis, the flummoxed author-on early women's rights!

On Women’s Rights, gasp, prior to the 20th century:

Back in my naïve days as a fledgling author, I joined critique groups to better polish my historical novels. My story, which took place in 1815, had a young woman who tried to stand up for herself in a typical male-dominated environment. I researched, and was surprised how many women advocated for "women’s rights" in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

But the man in my group objected, saying women never asked for rights until the twentieth century. What did he think we were doing all those centuries when most of us had minds of our own?

I found many people shared this narrow view.

When I came across an actual treatise on a female who sought her due in the seventeenth century, a woman now forgotten by time, I had to blog about her.

Mary Astell, a school teacher from Newcastle upon Tyne, England, published Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of their True and Greatest Interest, in 1694.

She was born in in 1666 to an upper middle-class family. Her father was a royalist Anglican who managed a coal company. As a woman, she received no formal education, as the culture of the time felt girls didn’t require any learning outside of the domestic realm. Fortunately for Mary, starting at the age of eight, she received an informal education from her uncle. Her uncle, an ex-clergyman, was affiliated with the Cambridge based philosophical school which based its teachings around radical philosophers such as Aristotle, Plato, and Pythagoras. Heady stuff for what was called, the feeble brains of women.

Mary’s father died when she was twelve, leaving her without a dowry. Her family’s limited finances were invested in her brother’s higher education and Mary and her mother were forced to move in with her aunt. After the death of her mother and aunt, Mary moved to Chelsea, London in 1688 where she was lucky enough to make the acquaintance of a circle of influential and literary women. These women helped Mary with the development and publication of her treatise.
Mary Astell was one of the first Englishwomen to advocate that women were as rational as men, and just as deserving of education. Her Serious Proposal presented a plan for an all-female college where women could pursue a life of the mind. In 1700, Mary published another work: Some Reflections upon Marriage. She warned, in witty prose, of the dangers to females "...of an ill Education and unequal Marriage." She urged women to make better matrimonial choices because a disparity in intelligence and character may lead to misery. Marriage should be based on lasting friendship rather than short-lived attraction.

She was known to debate freely with both men and women, and particularly for her groundbreaking methods of negotiating the position of women in society by engaging in philosophical debate rather than basing her arguments in historical evidence as had previously been attempted. One of her famous quotes stated: "If all Men are born Free, why are all Women born Slaves?"

Mary withdrew from public life in 1709 and founded a charity school for girls in Chelsea. She died in 1731, a few months after a mastectomy to remove a cancerous breast.
So when reviewers—or readers—criticize a novel for promoting a heroine who acts "before her time" remember that women have been seeking liberation for centuries.

Resources: "Astell, Mary." Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2011.

My current release, Ring of Stone, called a "true historical epic" depicts strong women in the eighteenth century, one who strives to become a physician before women were allowed, and uncovers shocking secrets in a small Cornish village.

Visit my website for information on my novels:

http://www.dianescottlewis.org