Once upon a time, I joined an online critique group.
I was excited when I first learned about it, overjoyed even to find like-minded
writers, since the group was exclusively for woman writers of my religion, but
my excitement didn’t last long.
I learned of this club soon after getting online, so
my first submissions for critique weren’t in the best of shape, I’ll admit
that. Back then, grammar check didn’t flag correctly spelled words that weren’t
correct for the sentence, so while spell check had been a big help, I had a long
way to go, and I knew it.
At one point, after submitting several pieces for
critique and only ever getting comments on the grammar, I complained to the
group because that’s all they noticed. The reply I got back was that I
shouldn’t be submitting something full of stupid errors, because it made it
hard to notice anything else.
So I went over the last piece I’d submitted again,
fixed the mistakes they had flagged, ran it through my spell and grammar check
two more times, then for extra insurance I sent a copy to my — then still in
junior high school — niece, to proof. Then I submitted it to the group for
critique.
The response?
“This is perfect, no problems whatsoever. Good job!”
And that from several different members of the
group. I wanted to scream, “Nobody’s perfect! Teach me something I don’t know!”
Yet somehow, I knew they wouldn’t understand my complaint, after all, they only
ever commented on grammar mistakes, and nothing else.
I found myself bemoaning my lack of good critiques
in a writing chat room with several nonmember friends, some of whom were
published with a mid-level publisher, not low-level or self-published like the
women on the critique group I was considering not renewing my membership of. One
of them offered to read the chapter in question herself. I thanked her
profusely and sent it “as is” to her.
She returned it bleeding red, giving me detailed lessons
in echo, redundancies, and explaining, which I’m afraid was only the tip of the
iceberg of the skills I still needed to learn to write at a level the best publishers
in the business expect. But at least it was a start, and I didn’t renew my
membership of the other group. They weren’t helping, why waste my money?
I did learn from the author, as well as a
professional editor and a college grad with a degree in creative writing. Not
that the road was easy, I have mentioned in the past how I nearly gave up once,
and I’ll admit it’s a few more times than that. Being
A Writer However, I have persevered, I learned
and I grew. Though sometimes I wonder where I’d be as a writer today if I’d
accepted the pat on the back the members of the one group gave me.
Would I even be as a good of a writer as I am today
if I’d accepted that good grammar was the only skill a writer needs? Of course
not! I didn’t even learn I was telling more than showing until the pro editor
told me so, and it took my college grad friend to teach me the difference. I’d
heard “show don’t tell” a lot in online chats not associated with that critique
group, but until then I’d never been able to figure it out and without learning
all these little details that go way beyond grammar, I wouldn’t be the writer I
am today.
I mean, saying grammar is the only thing you need to
know about writing, to be able to write excellent stories; is like saying all
you need to know about sewing is to how thread a sewing machine, to be able to
make a wedding dress. (And if you think that, you’ve never tried to adjust a
pattern, inset a zipper, or make a buttonhole. Oh wait; I avoided the
buttonholes on my wedding dress. J)
So, do you think good grammar is enough to make a
person a good writer? Or do you realize, as I did, that there’s more to writing
a story than the proper placement of words and punctuation? After all,
grade-schoolers should know that much. J
