My Crit Buddies

This is the title of the manuscript I finished in '99, have revised once myself, and am getting ready to do so again. It has been with a pair of writing friends of mine, and one has finished her reading and given me her comments.

This is exactly what I hoped to get when I first wandered into the room 18 months ago to attend a writers group meeting at my church. I had been in another writers' group, and it went well, but many of the folks were on a different wavelength from me, so I never got all of what I was hoping for. But here, with church folk, I hoped to find that common ground from which good crits come.

I got in to the church group pretty early, about the third of fourth meeting, and found that the group of 20 or so had at least a couple of other novelists. Meeting only once a month, it's to get to know people well enough share your work with, but after the third or fourth meeting, we decided to exchange novel portions with each other. But we did, and I have read one of their finished manuscripts, and one of them has read mine.

It's great. I'm psyched to review the comments, get more from the second reviewer, then revise revise revise!