I'm all about the hero throwing her on her back, but if there's going to be talk, it shouldn't be blahblahblah for two pages.

That's insane and surreal.

Writers groups are very helpful, but sometimes you grow out of any particular one. I've done so myself.

Different needs dictate different strategies. And a more genre specific group seems like a perfectly reasonable approach.

I doubt they'll take offense unless you phrase your departure with that intent. (Well, okay, les artistes are touchy, so no guarantees, but really, that has to be on them.)

I'm all about the hero throwing her on her back, but if there's going to be talk, it shouldn't be blahblahblah for two pages.

Oh, totally. And this particular story is maddening to critique, because there's the germ of a really interesting idea there, but she really doesn't have the grasp of the craft yet to make it shine. The dialogue is awkward, she tells when she should show, and the story is too episodic--the characters keep getting thrown back in time, but there's no obvious connection to the incidents, and I have no more clue about what's going on on page 250 than I did on page 50. I think she's beginning to improve, but it's a slowwww process.

And yeah, I think I've outgrown this group. And I've thought all along they're a little too easy on me.

Susan, are they all fairly new at the craft? Or are there some seasoned writers in there?

There's one seasoned writer, who's been publishing short stories off and on for quite some time. He's actually the instructor who runs the community college class our group grew out of. But he attends spottily because of his teaching commitments. Everyone else is at least as much of a newbie as I am, and arguably more so, because I have actually proved I can finish something now.

Then I suspect there may be an element (I know, I'm fixing on the obvious) of not knowing what they're really supposed to be critiquing outside their particular personal taste, in the easy-on-you.

Sometimes, though, the work is just damned good and there isn't much to critique....

Sometimes, though, the work is just damned good and there isn't much to critique....

One likes to hope....

The seasoned writer often tells me how precise my work is. Always makes me feel kind of damned with faint praise, that.

Nothing wrong with precise; it's a damned useful thing to be, unless you're writing something heavily spontaneous and freewheeling.

Well, yeah, but precise is a tool, a style. I'd like to think I'm wielding it in such a way that my readers are amused, touched, moved, what have you.

Speaking of growing, I've finally started outlining for real my "opus" using StoryView. I've been biting at the edges, drabbling little scenes with very little real idea what's going to happen. I'm stronger with character than plot, really. I'm hoping SV will help me put together a skeleton to hang the flesh of the story on.

So, I feel like this is really the official beginning of Kemar. Makes me a bit nervous and excited, and a little butterly-tummy going on. But it's begun in earnest.

Here goes nothin'.