This commentary was aired on November 4, 2007 as part of David Korzenik's interview about libel tourism.

Writing groups provide an amazingly useful resource for authors to learn the craft of writing, get publishing tips, and improve their storytelling skill.

There are two types of writing groups, in-person, and online. And each have their distinct strengths and weaknesses, so your mileage may vary depending on which group you join. A good place to look for local in-person writers groups is at your local library. If I've learned anything in my 38 years, it's that librarians know everything. Ask them about local groups, they will know where they meet, who of note is in them, and where they get their post meeting coffee/beer.

In person writers groups are great, because you can actually have a real-time back and forth with other writers. But, and this is a big but, you have to make sure they write, otherwise their opinions lose a lot of value. Take it from me, nothing sucks more than being the only guy with 5000 new words on writer's group night.

Oh, and always try and find a group that welcomes your genre or sub-genre of choice. There's nothing more embarrassing than dropping 5000 words of hard science fiction on a group of epic fantasy writers.

There are usually three kinds of people to watch out for in an in-person writer's group.

The first is the "Diarist/Newsletter Writer" who wants you to proofread the company health insurance newsletter, or critique their horrifically personal diary entries. So unless you are writing a piece of fiction where health insurance is discussed, or you ramble for 5000 words why you can't get a date, there probably won't be any useful feedback.

The second is the "Skittish Writer" who brings 5000 words every week but prefaces it with a detailed plea for mercy, and who in turn offer brutal and angry critiques of other peoples work as a way to offset their insecurities.

The third group is the "Klingons" and I don't mean the bumpy forehanded warrior race from Star Trek. Klingons don't write, barely critique, and often derail a meeting with smalltalk about kids, baseball, politics, or TV shows. Klingons love to hang around with writers because they imagine themselves as writers even though they don't write, or worse, bring in stories they wrote 40 years ago as part of a college course to prove that their decade long spate with no output is only prolonged writer's block.

Online crit groups are different than in-person groups because you can't stand up and punch someone upside the head if they are real assholes and there are plenty of real assholes in online crit groups. The anonymity of the Internet allows people to communicate without regard for how their text will be perceived, for some it's accidental, for others intentional.

I've run into several distinct types of online "critters" -

The first group is the "I Poop Ice Cream" group, who will insist that their lack of basic grammar, spelling, and punctuation is a "stylistic" choice and how dare you suggest that their unique paragraph structure not be understandable without a Rosetta stone! What kind of bastard points out that sentences shouldn’t end with a preposition, or start with a contraction, or have no verbs, or only have verbs. Often the second defense of this group is "Insert Famous Writer Name" does it all the time, and look, he's famous!

The second group is the "I Have No Tact" group, who will gladly refer to YOUR shortcomings as a human being under the guise of helping you develop a "thick skin". For example a comment on your manuscript may read like this, "Hey stupid, although you're ugly, write like you type with your butt cheeks, watch way too much Star trek, and no one likes you or anything you like, this sentence doesn't work for me. You jerk."

These folk are often the flip-side of the "I Poop Ice Cream" group.

The third group is the "Frustrated Grad Student" group, who will insist that since your work cannot possibly measure up to the mastery of Cormac McCarthy/Salman Rushdie, they only have enough interest to read half your story, barely, yet still name-drop hundreds of unreadable books and insist you read them to help you "polish your craft", then, they submit a godawful knockoff of "The Mists of Avalon" but set in post apocalyptic Denver, Colorado and featuring zombie dragons and cybernetic alchemists. Frustrated Grad Students insist that you don't understand their sheer brilliance when their baffling narrative dies two paragraphs into the tale.

The fourth group is the "Epic Decology Writer" group, who will only submit fragments (usually pages 567-621) of their massive 10 volume epic quest fantasy masterpiece that they've worked continuously on since their 12th birthday featuring characters and milieu lifted from old Dungeons and Dragons campaigns or current World of Warcraft raiding parties. These Epic Decology Writers answer every critique about "not being able to follow the narrative" with "if you'd only read the preceding 650,000 words it would all make perfect sense!" Epic Decology Writers never, ever, ever, ever, edit anything, ever because that takes time away from churning out 25 single spaced pages a day. And 9 out of 10 times Epic Decology Writer's critique consists of either "this story didn't work for me" and nothing else, or the more annoying and less useful flipside, a ream of references to their own enormous volume of work that no one else has read. "Well, in my fifth book, Randolph Cranker and the Whispering Scrub Brush Castle of Destruction, Book Four of "The Crankor Chronicles: A Novel of the Age of Iron and Magic: Volume 2", I also used adjectives."

The key to success in an online crit group is to be humble, and honest, but not misanthropic. Always critique what is posted, always read all the way through a story more than once, always annotate your comments, always be nice. Sure, the Internet makes you anonymous, but it doesn't have to make you an anonymous jerk.

(c) Jeffrey R. DeRego 2007