Critique City
Critique groups are a writer's best friend. I fully believe that the second most profound thing I learned with my writing degree was the importance of workshop. (The first most profound thing being concision, which is another blog post entirely.) Some people write for themselves, never intending another human being to read their work, and that's fine. However, there are a lot of writers out there who write specifically for other people to read. This is why I write. For me, my job as a writer is to translate my thoughts and visions to a page, then have that language translate back to thoughts and visions in a reader's head. Sounds creepy? It is, but who cares? It's fun to think someone else's thoughts for a while. Sometimes it's hard to tell, though, where my mind is taking over for the details of my writing. It can be difficult to know where my implications are coming across to the reader and where I'm filling in the blanks automatically. That's where w...