For years, you could slip into a brightly lit corner of the downtown San Francisco public library every Tuesday night for a public writing group. Dean Lipton, a craggy no-nonsense newspaper columnist, presided over a widely ranging bunch of newcomers and regulars. Homeless men shuffled up and read off rants of drugs and gods, and retired women wrote of the people they had known. We would sit spellbound as Jim Janko read his latest in a haunting spiritual novel of Vietnam ghosts visiting him on Alcatraz where he worked as a night watchman, or as Leonard Irving told stories of his childhood Ireland in a thick brogue, or as Robert Lavett Smith read image-laden poetry stemming from his jaunts around the bay or ...
We would discuss the merits of each piece. We critiqued not in a theoretical sense, but in a real sense -- Did this character ring true? Did that image and metaphor hold up? We touched on plot and character, poetry and sense, rhythms and cadences. We suggested -- if you changed this, moved that, switched this, thought about that, incorporated this. Our insights strengthened both the writing and our reactions as readers.
Yet you don't have to travel to San Francisco to work with a writing group on the street. In nearly every community there are writing groups for people who want to write and who want to engage writers in an honest critique of craft. By honest, I mean critiquers can be blunt without worrying about hurting friends or shutting down enthusiasm for a new medium. Linear writer's groups don't hold back because this is a new media, an experimental form where anything goes. Groups often have ground rules [1] so that critiquers can provide realistic, even blunt feedback. In the writer's groups I've been involved in, we told our friends and our colleagues--this doesn't work, and here's why. By critique, I mean people grappling with the work itself -- What is it saying? What is my experience with this piece? How would I relate to the characters? If it is a serious work, how has my world view changed from this work? If it is a funny work or one about love and happiness, how does it make me feel? In short, does the work work?
Writing groups like this grow as writers discover the practical value--as a group of betatest readers and a pool of wisdom on honing the craft of writing. The critiquers do not need an academic grounding in theory, as they are reacting as readers rather than as theoreticians. They can analyze how a piece moves them, what a piece conveys. They can then explain the mechanics involved in writing and polish the writing to convey the meaning and tell stories that appeal to readers.
Honing the writer's craft is a practice--you can't point to a single reading, a single how-to book, or a single gathering of writers and honest critiquers. Moreover, it is a thriving community and industry. Writer's groups flow from this grassroots need--there are groups for every imaginable genre. There are tiny local groups meeting in cafes and groups online which boast of thousands of members. Writing magazines and digests with combined circulations into the hundreds of thousands and higher.
What would the writing community look like without these groups, this feedback from knowledgeable betareaders, this exchange of ideas? Might not writing become more and more arcane as writers write without knowing how readers will react, without sharing skills and pointers to improve the way they convey the story, the message? How would new writers come into the craft, and how would they be nurtured to produce the best quality of writing possible? Honest criticism is needed and to make works work. A community of writers is needed to gather new writers into the fold and improve the overall state-of-the-art in hypertext writing.