Guest Post by C.C. Dowling: Everyone's a Critic

C.C. Dowling delighted me when she agreed to do another guest post for me. She's a fantastic writer, and she uses the word "amazeballs" a lot. Oh, and I'm probably outing her by saying this, but I've finally managed to turn her into a Doctor Who fan too. Thanks C.C. Sorry, I lost your paypal account. Again.

Everyone’s A Critic
by C.C. Dowling

@CCDowling

Ever realize how finding the right critique partner (A.K.A. CP) is kinda like dating?

No? Well, if you’re a writer, you should try it. Finding a CP, that is. I’ll leave the dating advice to another blog.

Finding a CP that is congruent with your style, personality, and craft level is crucial to being a successful writer. I don’t care who you are. Every single one of us has craft issues that we can’t see in our own writing. Why? Because we’re too close to it.

Sorta like how your partner can’t see that the last argument they had with you was completely their fault.

But I digress.

When you’re in a relationship like a writer is with their work, it’s difficult to take a step back and see it for what it really is. Whatever that “really is” may be. That’s where CPs come in. But where to find one?

When you’re dating, there are a TON of sites available to you, depending on what type of relationship you’re looking for. But where to find a CP is less clear.

Side note: Someone really should develop a website called CPMatch.Com. And hey, if this exists, or anything like it, please leave the website in the comments!

I can tell you what worked for me. That might work for you, and it might not. And, it might lead to an even better idea you come up with. If that happens, again, there’s a comment section for a reason. You can thank me there.

If you read the last guest post I wrote, you probably know what I’m going to say. If you haven’t read it, then you can find it here: Three Lessons To Keep Your Readers Up At Night.

Yeah, you guessed it. Twitter. I found almost all of my CPs through Twitter. The writing community on there is amazeballs. Aside from straight up hashtags like #critiquepartner, there are tons of contests. And when you enter them, and you stalk lurk keep up with the threads, you’ll see that people are offering to read your first 250 or your query, if you read theirs.

Heck, you can even offer it first. It’s your writing career. Grab it where it counts.

By doing it this way, you’ll get to:

A.) See what else is out there.  

B.) Test out someone’s material and critiquing style before making a major commitment.            

C.) Meet other writers.

This is the picture Jerry uses for
The Ubergroup. Don't worry. I
don't know what it is either.

The meeting other writers is important. In doing so, I met fellow author Jerry Quinn (@bewarethejabb) who runs a fantastic group on Scribophile (http://www.scribophile.com/) called Ubergroup, where I met the fabulous, and awesomesauce talent of Scott Hughey.

Side note: Scott, payments can be made via PayPal.

It’s also fair that I point out I met my very first CP, and just an all-around great writer, @ABSevan, through a Writer’s Digest first ten pages bootcamp. WD offers all kinds of online resources and classes where you can meet other writers in your genre, and at your level. Check them out (@WritersDigest  www.writersdigest.com.)

Okay, I think I’m done plugging everyone.

Bottom line is, as writers, we need someone who will tell it like it is, matches our talent, and provides useful feedback. Personally, I like my CPs to be straight up honest. Scratch through my crap with a red sharpie, and pat me on the back when I deserve it.

Everyone’s CP needs are different. Just like in a relationship, you want someone who pushes you to grow, meets you where you need them to, compliments your strengths and weaknesses, and wants to see you succeed.

How do you CP? Leave a comment to let us know.

---

C.C. Dowling lives in America’s finest city, San Diego, with her toddler (who plays in the yard with Faeries), her husband (the financial shaman), her Aussie (with mesmerizing blue eyes), and a pet dragon (who is the real reason the neighbor’s dog barks incessantly at night). 

When she’s not working in the field of neuroscience, she’s writing fantastical short stories and novels about blood-drinkers, shape-shifters, soul reapers, and demons hell-bent on redemption. You can find her on Twitter at @CCDowling.

The Write kind of Puns

Sometimes I amuse myself on Twitter so much, I have to share the results here. Today, it was all about writing puns and jokes:

#WritingJokes

• I read about a troll living under an overpass. There was no overpass though. The book was abridged.
  
  
  
• Reading high-fantasy can be hobbit forming.
  
• Thinking of writing a romance novel. The leads will rendezvous privately in an unexpected plot tryst.
  
• I couldn't see my character's motivation in my first draft. That's why I needed to do a revision.
  
• Thought I had a great story idea: a mermaid who lived in a pond. Turns out the plot was a bit shallow.
  
• I read a story about an 8 foot tall man who meets a real giant. Talk about a tall tale!
  
• Her poetry was so horrible, the judge made her read it out loud to herself. After all, the punishment should fit the rhyme.
  
• Did you hear about the two writers on their honeymoon? They spent a lot of time in metaphorplay.
  
• I'm writing my next novel in my friend's basement. He has the best cellar.
  
• The writer was convicted of plagiarism. His sentence was to hand write "War and Peace." Talk about Carpal Punishment!
  
• I'm always freezing at my writing desk. Probably because there's so many drafts.
  
• I bet Charles Dickens had an interesting spice rack in his kitchen. He had the best of thymes and the worst of thymes.
  
• My first short story was about a woman who maintained a small garden. Too bad it didn't have much of a plot.
  
• When I write longhand, I get #writers cramp. It's a bad case of authoritis.
  
• Did you hear about the backwards #poet? She wrote inverse.

5 Words On Writing (#5WordsOnWriting)

I can't believe it.  I created the hastag #5WordsOnWriting on Twitter yesterday and it's STILL not trending.

It's like everyone expects me to do all the work.  Fine.  But don't expect it to trend as quickly with me doing all the heavy lifting.

Does anybody else have writing tips or tidbits, in exactly 5 words?  If so, please share!  Here are the ones I tweeted yesterday:

• Give characters what they fear.
• Stop procrastinating and start writing.
• Love and embrace the craft.
• Conflict.  Then more conflict.  Repeat.
• Reserve time, relax, and write.
• Don't sacrifice story for prose.
• Make all your characters suffer.

Who has something else to share?

Starting at the End

Wow.  It's been a busy week or so.  My poor blog feels neglected.

The writing continues, if not as smoothly as before.  I may blog about the life difficulties, and how I'm overcoming them in terms of writing later.  Let's talk about the actual writing itself.

The novel smacked me in the brain so hard it left a mark.  I started with an outline.  Less than three chapters in, I couldn't even see the original story.  This one is much better, but it means I didn't know where to go.  I knew an upcoming scene, but couldn't figure out how to get there.

What to do?  Take advice from this very blog!  That's what!

Some of you may remember a guest blog by C.C. Dowling.  If you haven't read it, do so now.  Seriously.  I'll wait.  It's right here: Three Lessons.

Her third lesson?  Social Networking.  Stick with me here, this is important.
Here's how she put it.

There's an amazing community of writers/editors/agents/publishers all available in one hundred forty characters or less.  What I've learned is that almost everyone is supportive and wants to help you succeed.

Here's the good part.  I've already networked with C.C.  I got to use more than 140 characters!  And she's an amazing writer, who's being published soon too, so there.

We're in a critiquing group together, so I told her my novel's issues.  She suggested, if I knew where things were going, I write that and then fill in the details.

See, when you read, you read in sequence.  Unless you're one of those people who skips to the end first, and if you are I'm shunning you for the rest of this post.

Writers are not constrained by this.  They don't have to start at the beginning and move chronologically through the piece until the end.  Want to write the middle first?  Write it.  I've heard this advice before, but it scared me.  Writing out of sequence?  Isn't that how madness starts?  Or the zombie apocalypse?

The novel had stalled though, and the short stories I kept writing became distractions from the larger work.  So I took her advice.

And it's like the writing world doubled in size.  It worked marvelously.  I knew what had to happen.  Suddenly, I just had to connect the pieces.  AND THEY FIT!

I've recently done the same thing when another short story stalled.  And frankly, I may write like this from now on.

Oh.  And the novel?  It still feels like it stalls after most of the scenes.  That needs to be fixed, but the good news is, I have a new technique to help fix it when that happens.

Thanks C.C.

Rejected First Drafts

See me on Twitter here:
https://twitter.com/TheWriteScott

Had some twitter fun this morning.  You sometimes see people coming up with the rejected first drafts of familiar lines or sentences.  I forced myself to stop at three.  This is the kind of thing I used to spend all day doing, and that way leads back to madness.

This started when I remembered  Ray Bradbury's great opening line, "It was a pleasure to burn."  Fahrenheit 451 was my first real science fiction novel, and every once in a while I'm reminded of it.  But enough from me.  Could the masters have started their famous works this way?

"It was a pleasure to burp."
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

"The hero of my own life? Nah. I'll just become the world's best magician."
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. Or do I? Mwuhahaha!"
Song of Myself - Walt Whitman

Twitter? Oh No!

Let's go ahead and get this out of the way.  You can follow me on twitter here: @TheWriteScott

Against my better judgement, I created the account to network with people in the writing and publishing industries, and to promote this blog.

Why was I against doing this?  Am I a twitter hater?  Can I not figure out the point of 140 character messages?

Far from it.


I gave up twitter almost a year ago.  Maybe I should have marked the date.  "Hi, my name is Scott and I'm an addict.  I've been tweet free XXX days."  Well, make it 0 days now.

I had more twitter accounts than I can remember.  Some had dozens of followers.  Some had hundreds.  Two or three of them had thousands.  Low thousands, but thousands nonetheless.  Parody accounts, hobby accounts, serious accounts targeted at certain subjects, zombie related accounts.  You name it.

What was that?  Ah, yes.  Role playing accounts.  So you've heard of them.  Before I discovered those I was getting pretty bad, but they were the ones that dragged me down.  In role playing accounts, you either create a character or assume the role of a character, you find others who like to role play and you make stories together.

It's almost completely, but not entirely, exactly unlike the thrill of writing.  It wasn't writing.  It wasn't craft.  Still, this was during a time that I wasn't pursuing professional writing, and to a small extent, the creative outlet helped release some of my creative energy.  Probably because of this, and any joking aside, it became a serious addiction.

I knew I had it bad when I asked my wife one day if she could drive us to the restaurant.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"I'm in a wedding."
"You're what?"
"It's okay, it's not mine.  One of the people I role play with asked me to create an account so I could be the best man in his wedding."
"You're crazy," she said.

I'm just glad she didn't ask what I was doing the day before during the bachelor party.

I gave it all up.  Deleted the twitter app off my phone.  Deactivated many of the accounts, the ones I was active on anyway.  And I felt... free.  Sometime later my mind cleared up enough to pour some of the energy into real writing.

I love twitter.  I hate it.  This time I intend to use it as a tool for networking first and promotion second- and nothing more.  I'm proud of myself too.  I didn't know it was possible to be active on twitter and tweet less than 10 tweets in a weekend.  I've got one more hour though.

Hopefully I'll see you on @thewritescott