Writing Group Blues

I took the plunge last night and went to an advanced fiction writing group. It was in a little quaint room at an arts center. There were 7 of us, and of course I made a grand entrance of being late. It seems that GPS systems do not update as often as they should and my directions were OLD. There is a whole new highway for goodness sakes. I digress.

 

Members of the group submit work in the form of a chapter or short story. The submissions are really for the next months group, so what I was listening to had already been read by members in attendance. Two short stories were critiqued: I wished I had a copy of because they sounded interesting.

The critique takes three forms- writing on the piece ( grammar, spelling comments), a written report that is broken down into sections such as setting, plot, ect… and then the third form is an oral report. These reports are what take the bulk of the meeting. I listened to the reports intently, but I began to wonder if the folks had all read the same piece because their comments were so divergent. This is not a bad thing, because  the writer definitely has different viewpoints to consider.

At the end I submitted the first chapter and a half of “Erl King” for next month and then we introduced ourselves. Half of the people in attendance last night were new just like me.

When it was my turn I told them I was a writer of a few magazine articles and an author of some non fiction books. I was asked what kinds of books I wrote and I told them some of the titles.

The reaction I received from a couple of the writers was a big shock. I was challenged by the notion I was not an expert in these fields so how could I write a book. This is a fiction group right? Creative people writing about people and events that never happened?

My response was that I did A LOT of research and talked to many experts. I assured them that by the end of the book I was an expert on the fields I wrote about. I had some responses that referred to my act of writing as fiction just like making a fictional resume. These comments I ignored.

Writing non fiction is about making boring information interesting. It is about research and spinning factional information into a book people won’t yawn about. Marketing these titles to a publisher is not easy, but these are areas I was sure I could right about due to my life experiences. This is what I encourage other non fiction writers to think about.

We will see how next month goes. Maybe I was the victim of a green eyed monster. (Shakespeare- Merchant of Venice)