1. Ask questions before you join. Find out how many writers are in the group and what kind of experience they have. Then ask to sit in for a session. This should give you the opportunity to read the other members’ works and discover whether the group is a good fit for you. If you’re a poet, for example, you may want to join a poet’s group. If you’re a literary writer, you may not feel comfortable in a group full of sci-fi and thriller writers.

2. Groups work best when there are rules. There should be page- or word-count limits on submissions. Find out if writers expect written feedback in addition to verbal feedback. There will likely be a set number of writers who get critiqued each night. (For example, my group has a limit of 20 pp per person, three people are critiqued each meeting, and we meet every two weeks.) Some groups don’t allow the writer whose work is being critiqued to talk during the critique to prevent her from getting defensive. Some groups give critiques one at a time followed by a more free-for-all discussion at the end during which the writer whose work is being critiqued can ask questions and the others can respond. Others follow a more open format during which anyone (except the writer whose work is being critiqued) can jump in at any time. It’s important to have a time limit for each writer, and to avoid too much repetition of critiques.

3. Don’t take the criticism personally. Remember, it is your work that is being critiqued, not you. There are no good or bad writers, just beginning writers and more advanced writers. Everyone started at the beginning.

4. Practice humility. This is one of the most challenging aspects of being a writer. It’s not always easy to take criticism—not when you’re a newbie and not when you’re an experienced writer. But if you think your writing is perfect and you refuse to heed anyone’s advice, you may find yourself with six unpublished books in your drawer. Make it your goal to put your ego aside and learn as much as you can from your fellow writers. Do everything you can to improve your writing through better dialogue, a stronger story climax, more well-rounded characters, etc.

5. Don’t make every change everyone suggests. While practicing humility, be careful not to assume that every writer knows more than you, or that they are always correct. They are not always correct. Take note of which suggestions were made by two or more people, and consider making those changes. But do what feels right to you. You can’t please everyone all of the time, and if you did, your writing would be too plebian to be interesting.

6. When giving feedback, use the sandwich technique. A popular method of critiquing someone else’s work is to start with something positive followed by some constructive criticism, and then close on a positive note. Remember, it’s much easier to criticize than to praise. Make an effort to point out the positive aspects of the author’s work. And when providing criticism, don’t just point out what doesn’t work. Make suggestions for how to improve the piece. Your job is to help the author figure out how to become a better writer.

7. Don’t get hung up on copyediting the author’s work. A writer’s group isn’t a place for you to show off your editing skills. Feel free to correct glaring typos and spelling errors in the text, but don’t use your critique as an opportunity to lecture on the virtues of the Oxford comma. Focus on what does and does not work in the dialogue, story arc, character development, descriptions, etc.

8. Read each piece twice—once straight through to get the gist of the story and then a second time with your red pen. If you mark up the text on your first read, you’ll find that many of your questions are answered later in the text. Give the piece a chance to stand on its own before providing it with crutches. Then go back and read it a second time while making notes in the margins.

What about you? Are you in a writer’s group? What suggestions do you have for someone joining a writer’s group for the first time? What has and has not worked for you?

As someone who just finished the last revision of my manuscript Monday night (Hurray! I’m taking the day off to go to the hot springs tomorrow, my favorite reward), this rang true for me. I sent an earlier draft of my memoir, Paris On Less Than $10,000 A Day, out two years ago to five agents. All five requested fulls, and all five had positive feedback but ultimately turned the book down (No wait, there was a sixth, the fabulous Nathan Bransford, from whom I received a form rejection, but who hasn’t received a form rejection from Nathan?) Rather than send it to more agents, I spent the next two years rewriting the book. I don’t regret that decision because I think the book has greatly improved, but now, as I prepare to send it out again, I have one goal: No matter how many rejections I get (assuming I get some) I’m not allowed to revise my book again, unless an agent specifically requests that I do so.

I’m confident that my book is well-written and marketable. I’ve read enough publishing blogs to know not to take rejection personally. It’s an impossibly tough market, the business is incredibly subjective (It’s all about finding the right agent, the who will fall in love with my story), etc. etc. I know all that. And yet …

I also know myself. A month from now, after having received three or four rejections, I’ll begin to doubt myself. I’ll doubt my book and my writing in general. I’ll analyze rejection e-mails for clues as to what could be improved. I’ll kick myself for not having gotten my book out there sooner. I’ll wonder if having a bigger author platform would make a difference. I’ll tell myself that memoirs are a thing of the past (unless you’re a celebrity from the 80s), that modeling books are out, that the only chance I have of getting published is to sleep with Oprah’s hairdresser. I’ll wonder if my book is too serious. I’ll tell myself that if only chapters 1, 6, 9, and 18 were as funny as 2, 7, and 41, it would have sold by now. In other words, I’ll be plagued by self-doubt.

Back when I was rock climbing, I wanted to get my lead card at my local rock climbing gym. I’d heard from several people that no one passes the first time they take the lead test. Climbers often have to take it two or three times to get their cards because their lead has to be PERFECT—perfect clips, smooth, strong climbing on an overhanging 5.10B or 5.10C, and no stepping on or behind the rope. I passed on my first try. Not because I’m a great climber, but because I was so afraid to fail that I practiced and practiced and practiced and practiced long after any sane person would have taken the test. I would not take the test until I was confident that I could do it flawlessly. Why? Because I’m plagued by perfectionism, the cousin of self-doubt.

Perfectionism can be a good thing. It can lead to great accomplishments. But it can be damaging, too. It can slow us down, it can prevent us from putting ourselves out there, from taking risks. And in order to get published, we need to be willing to put ourselves out there. We need to take risks—in our writing and in our lives.

What about you? Are you plagued by perfectionism and/or self-doubt? Do you find that men are more confident than women when submitting their writing for publication? How do you remain positive in the face of rejection?

Next, I want to share a discussion I had with Roni Loren last week on her blog. Roni’s post “How Fast Do You Have To Write To Build a Successful Literary Career” struck a nerve with me. She stated that although the standard expectation of writers for decades has been to write one book a year, today writers are expected to write faster. In order to create her backlist and quit her day job, she said, “I KNOW I have got to be able to write more than 1-2 books a year.” She mentioned that romance author Maya Banks writes 8-10 books a year and that proof that her quality hasn’t suffered is that she hit the New York Times bestseller list last year.

In May, I wrote a post about social media books in which I quoted a story told by Robert Kiyosaki in Rich Dad, Poor Dad, a personal finance book I’m sure you’ve heard of. Kiyosaki told a reporter who had had trouble getting her novel published that she should take a marketing class. When the reporter appeared taken aback, Kiyosaki pointed out that the cover of his book read “bestselling author,” not “bestwriting author.” I used that anecdote to illustrate the importance of social media marketing. What I didn’t mention is that the best-writing part is equally as important. ONCE you’ve written your book as best you can, THEN you should worry about selling it and marketing it, but not at the expense of the quality of the writing. And just because a book hits a bestseller list, does not mean it is well written. It means that it has sold a lot of copies, for whatever reason. (Think of all the blockbuster movies that make gazillions of dollars but get terrible reviews.)

IF you are lucky enough to be one of those authors who can truly crank out two great books a year without letting the quality of your writing suffer, go for it. I am not one of those people. The first draft of my memoir was 520 pages, and I’ve spent the past four years revising it and editing it down. I’ve never heard that there is any expectation for writers to write more than a book a year. Most published authors I know spend 3-4 years on a book. (Samuel Park spent 3 years 9 mos on his). Roni’s rationale behind writing 2+ books per year is that she needs to create a backlist in order to make enough money from her writing to quit her day job.

The argument for a backlist is a good one. (The point being that if someone reads and likes one of your books, he can go out and buy the others.) It’s an argument to stop being so anal about your first book being a super-mega-bestseller and just GET IT OUT THERE because if people like your second book, they’ll go back and buy your first. That happened to Alice Siebold. After the runaway success of The Lovely Bones, people went out and bought her earlier memoir, Lucky, which hadn’t met great success when it was first published.

But why does a backlist have to be developed in six months? What’s wrong with publishing a book every two or three years? You’ll still create a backlist, just a little slower. Like slow blogging. If you blog once a week, you’ll still build a following, just a little slower. My argument that I’d rather see authors take time to write a really good book than to rush them to publication was countered with many comments by people arguing that more time writing does not necessarily equal a better book. Of course it doesn’t in all cases. But I bet if you piled all the books that took less than one year to write on the left side of a table and all the books that took more than one year to write on the right side, well, first the table would tip over. But I bet you’d see a greater number of high quality books—regardless of genre—on the right side. Now, there will be some great books on the left side. Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 in nine days. There will be YA books and novellas that took little time because they are short. There will be books by experienced writers who have so much practice writing that they truly can crank out a good book in less than a year.

But I hope everyone doesn’t get into a two+ books a year frenzy. There are many ways to make a living as a writer. You can publish your books and earn money from your backlist, but you can also teach, edit, consult, speak, and publish shorter pieces like book reviews and magazine articles.

I think it’s wonderful that Roni is so motivated and that she has a clear goal for herself in mind. I think it’s wonderful that writers are mastering social media and how to market their work. But I think it’s even more wonderful when someone spends four years—or three years and nine months—on a book to create a truly wonderful book that will enlighten and entertain his or her readers.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled post. I was doing some research a few weeks ago and stumbled across this post on Joe Konrath’s blog. It’s a very touching and very sad post, and you should read it. But the title, “Depression and Writers,” is what really struck a chord with me. I have suffered from depression and know many other writers who have as well, which got me to thinking, which came first, the writing or the depression? Do writers get depressed because they are writers, or do people with depression tend to flock toward writing, painting, and music as a means to express their suffering? I think both. I think people who suffer from depression benefit from expressing themselves creatively (I know that when I was modeling in Paris and depressed more often than not, I wrote furiously in my journals nearly every day, and that constant practice led me to want to take my writing to the next level.) I also think, like in the case of Kiana Davenport (whose collection of short stories I bought but have not yet read), depression may be exacerbated by the ups and downs (mostly downs these days) of the writing life.

Let me say right now—whether you are published or not—if you are relying on external validation from the public and the publishing industry to ward off your depression, get thee to a shrink stat. Because there is NO guarantee that your unpublished book will get published. There is NO guarantee that your published book will get good reviews. There is NO guarantee that your published book with great reviews will sell enough to pay your mortgage. SO PLEASE do not let the craziness that is going on in the publishing industry today determine how you feel about yourself, your writing, or your life. I know it’s hard. We (as writers) are smart, creative, motivated people who could have gone to law school or earned an MBA. We could be making a lot of money! Instead, we chose to follow our hearts because we love literature and we love words, and we wanted to give back to others some of the joy, fulfillment, and knowledge we have reaped from the many books we have read throughout our lifetimes. That and because we love to write. (If you are one of those overachievers who is making a ton of money as a doctor or a lawyer AND writing books on the side, you’re probably too busy and overwhelmed to know if you’re depressed or not!)

So yes, writing is hard. And it can exacerbate depression. It’s hard when you’ve taken writing classes, you’ve earned your MFA (or, rather, spent all your earnings on your MFA), written your novel, revised your novel until you have carpal tunnel and are nearly blind, hired a freelance editor to edit your book, revised again, queried agents, been rejected by agents, queried more agents, gotten some bites but no offer, revised some more, queried more agents, been offered representation by an agent, then sat around for a year while your agent couldn’t sell your manuscript, considered self-publishing, considered changing agents, considered re-revising … and on and on. It’s hard.

But there are a few things writers can do to help/prevent/alleviate depression:

1. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Have other interests and other sources of income besides writing. Also have more than one project you’re working on at once. Don’t bank everything on one manuscript. It may be your second or third or fourth that sells. Remember ex-literary agent and published author Nathan Bransford said he wrote a book in his 20s ” that didn’t work out.” I can promise you he’s not the only one.

2. Exercise! This is my secret sauce. When I get down, I go running, or swimming, or even just for a walk outside, and it makes me feel so much better. Yes, there are those days when I feel too crappy to go running. That’s when I …

3. Call a friend. Sometimes it helps just to talk about things. Feeling you’re not alone with your feelings, or your problems, that someone else is shouldering the burden with you, can offer tremendous relief.

4. Write. Writing isn’t always the answer. Sometimes we need to take a break from writing. But if you haven’t been writing for a while, scribble in a journal for a few pages, or start a new short story. You could get crazy and WRITE A POEM.

5. Get some fresh air. Have you been spending all your time in front of a computer? Have you been writing and blogging and Tweeting and Facebooking? Maybe it’s time for you to take a hike. I did this yesterday, and I felt strong and happy and invigorated. It’s so important to get away from the electronics and the lights and the traffic and the roads now and then. Take a walk in the woods. Or have a picnic on the beach. Or go jump in a lake. A little oxygen and some negative ions may change your outlook on life.

6. Read. When I was living alone in Paris in the late 80s/early 90s, I would head to the English bookstore (W.H. Smith) whenever I felt down. Sometimes I bought self-help books (Louisa L. Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life) and sometimes I bought novels, but curling up in bed with a good book always made me feel less alone.

7. Take care of yourself. Get enough sleep, and eat healthy food. If you’re like me, you get depressed when you’re sleep deprived for too long, or if you eat crappy food too many days in a row. It’s important to exercise, but it’s also important to get enough rest. Lie in bed and read a book, take a hot bath, or get a massage.

8. Get help. If all else fails, don’t hesitate to call a therapist and set up an appointment. I’ve been to five in my lifetime, and most of my friends have been to them, too. They’re awesome, and if they weren’t so expensive, I’d probably still go because I love having someone sit there and listen to me blab for an hour.

What about you? Do you occasionally (or frequently) suffer from depression? How do you deal with it? Do you think writers tend to get depressed more often than non-writers? Why?

I put the task off until two nights before the rehearsal because I dreaded the thought of revealing A) Embarrassing details about my personal life or B) My horrible writing. Then I reminded myself that we have ALL committed bad writing. Every one of us. Even bestselling authors. I also remembered a line a journalist friend once quoted: “There are no good or bad writers; only good and bad writing.”

So I lugged my box up from the basement and dug in. I regretted (appropriately) having thrown out the ex-boyfriend letter, but I was sure there were other regrettable gems waiting to be discovered. Like this one:

Recipe for a fucked-up relationship (marriage)

2 calls per day in town; 1 call per day out of town
2 I loves yous each day
Make love two times per week, once in morning, once at night
I cook on pasta, fish, casserole, and leftover nights. You cook on BBQ’d hotdogs, BBQ’d hamburgers and BBQ’d steak nights. I do the dishes, you take out the trash. I pay the rent, you pay telephone and utilities. You drop the kids off at daycare. I pick them up.

Recipe for a good marriage
Make love six times this week, none the next
Call when it’s in your heart to talk to the other person
Say I love you whenever you feel it.
Cook when you can, as often as you find time.

Or perhaps this “poem”:

It’s okay to be sad—cry, cry, cry
It’s okay to be mad—talk, talk, talk
It’s okay to be happy—smile, smile, smile

None of these were long enough, though, or funny enough, to read in front of an audience. I needed something really bad, something I had worked hard at to make good. And then I saw it. Lying in the corner of my box was a blue card stock cover poked through with bronze fasteners—my screenplay. When I was 22, I wrote a feature-length screenplay about what happened to supermodels when they retired. They went to Supermodel Planet, where they flew around in capes (à la Superman), rescuing Earthlings from fashion disasters. The story is much more complex than that, of course, involving lots of sex with the only man on the planet—the gardener—drugs, poker-playing, and a plot culminating in a fashion show. It was meant to be a farce, a Zoolander of the early 90s. Instead, it was a disaster worse than any visible panty line. But I’m old enough now to look back on it and laugh. In fact, I laughed so hard reading it tonight that I had mascara smeared all over my face.

And the best part is how nice the teacher of the screenwriting class I took at UCLA extension was. She circled the best lines and wrote “Great line!” and otherwise marked up the faulty screenplay formatting. She did provide advice about my character and plot in her typed critique, but nowhere did she tell me that my writing sucked. Nowhere did she make me feel bad. Nowhere did she make me want to quit writing. So remember when critiquing other people’s work—a person who submits a poorly written story isn’t a bad writer; she’s a beginning writer. And her writing isn’t bad; it just needs work. You were a beginner once, too. Just take a look through that box in the basement, and I’m sure you’ll find something regrettable.

Meanwhile, come on down to the Swedish American Hall in San Francisco this Thursday at 8 p.m. (2174 Market St.) to laugh at with us. You won’t regret it.

And now, a question for you—what is the most regrettable thing you’ve ever written? Was it a love letter? A poem? A short story or journal entry? Please share a few lines in the comments below. Best entry gets an autographed copy of one of my worst poems.

I have an office, too, in which I write, and it’s wonderful and quiet, and I get to chat with other writers over lunch, but there’s something different about being up here. Maybe it’s the view of the redwood trees, maybe it’s the comfort of having the kitchen (and thus pizza and chocolate and tea) right next to the dining room table where I work. Maybe it’s the solitude—no kids! For three days! No appointments, no commitments, no dishes, no laundry! Because there’s something about having NO interruptions all day—no phones to answer, no mail to check, no mouths to feed, no bills to pay—that allows me to settle into a quieter state of mind in which I write much better. My mind is relaxed, not rushed, and my writing takes on a softer, more introspective quality. I wrote “Portrait of a Model As a Young Girl” when I was up here last month, and it needs work, but it’s a good complement to my other writing, which is full of snappy dialogue.

So here’s my question to you: Do you have a room of your own? A place you can write that is free of distractions (possibly free from Internet, so you don’t have to use MacFreedom like I do), where you can roll up your sleeves and get your fingers inky? How does that space affect your writing? Do you find that you write differently in different places? At a library versus at a cafe? At work versus at home? Where (and when) do you do your best writing?

My writer’s retreat, although I mostly drink tea, not wine, or I’d be passed out on the couch instead of here writing at the table.

One of the most difficult processes of revision is cutting (but not necessarily deleting) chapters or excerpts that you’re invested in. Those chapters may hold some personal meaning, or you may simply have spent a shitload of time writing them. Let’s say you spent a week researching every detail from which trees are indigenous to the region in which the antagonist took his vacation to the front page headlines of the Kansas City Star on November 17, 1949. Let’s say you spent a week writing it, another week polishing it, and yet another week revising it after having had it critiqued by your best friend, your Aunt Gracie, and your award-winning writers’ group. And let’s say, worst of all, that it’s really good. Tough luck. Chop it. Because if it doesn’t move the story along, doesn’t deepen the reader’s understanding of the character, or just doesn’t fit where you stuck it between Chapters 21 and 23 as a flashback that takes place within a dream sequence, it’s gotta go. But how can you make that excision while losing the least amount of blood?

1. Fist of all, when you’re writing chapters, don’t spend too much time on the details until you’re done with the entire manuscript. I know the temptation to spend hours doing research because research means you get to use the Internet (and we all want excused to use the Internet) and research means you get to put off doing any real writing. But it’s better to write “TK” (short for “tokum” an intentional misspelling of “to come”) and to come back to it later. I can’t tell you how many chapters I’ve spent weeks writing and revising to perfection only to remove them completely from my manuscript. Now when I sit down to write, I resist the urge to over-research before it’s time.

2. Second, don’t delete the chapters you remove from your manuscript. Just move them to a separate folder titled “Extra Chapters” or “Extra Scenes.” You’ll find a use for them someday, either as scenes in you next novel, as standalone pieces to be published in magazines or journals, or as fodder for other stories, chapters, and blog posts.

3. Don’t take it personally. Your writing is not you. If someone suggests you remove a section, it doesn’t mean you aren’t a good writer. In fact, it doesn’t mean that that passage is not well written. It just means that the book will work better without it. Which brings me to number four.

4. Tell that chapter to take one for the team. A book is like a team and and each individual chapter, or passage, needs to act in the best interest of that team. If that means benching it, then so be it. Give that chapter a glass of lemonade and some sunscreen. Let it watch the game. But keep it off the field until the game is won.

5. And finally, don’t get too attached to your writing. Remember the story of Rodin, who chopped off the hands of Honore de Balzac. Quoted from Laos Egri’s The Art of Dramatic Writing:

Rodin, the great French sculptor, had just finished the statue of Honore de Balzac. The figure wore a long robe with long loose sleeves. The hands were folded in front.
Rodin stepped back, exhausted but triumphant, and eyed his work with satisfaction. It was a masterpiece!
Like any artist, he needed someone to share his happiness. Although it was four o’clock in the morning, he hastened to wake up one of his students.
The master rushed ahead with mounting excitement and watched the young man’s reaction.
The student’s eyes slowly focused upon the hands.
“Wonderful!” he cried. “What hands… Master, I’ve never seen such marvelous hands before!”
Rodin’s face darkened. A moment later Rodin swept out of his studio again. A short while later he returned with another student in tow.
The reaction was almost the same. As Rodin watched eagerly, the pupil’s gaze fastened on the hands of the statue and stayed there.
“Master,” the student said reverently,”only a God could have created such hands. They are alive!”
Apparently Rodin had expected something else, for once more he was off, now in a frenzy. When he returned he was dragging another bewildered student with him.
“Those hands… those hands…” the new arrival exclaimed, in the same reverent tone as the others,”if you had never done anything else, Master, those hands would make you immortal!”
Something must have snapped in Rodin, for with a dismayed cry he ran to a corner of the studio and grabbed a fearful looking axe. He advanced toward the statue with the apparent intention of smashing it to bits.
Horror stricken, his students threw themselves upon him, but in his madness he shook them off with superhuman strength. He rushed to the statue and with one well aimed blow, chopped off the magnificent hands.
Then he turned to his stupefied pupils, his eyes blazing.
“Fools!” he cried. “I was forced to destroy these hands because they had a life of their own. They didn’t belong to the rest of the composition. Remember this, and remember it well: no part is more important than the whole!”
And that’s why the statue of Balzac stands in Paris, without hands. The long loose sleeves of the robe appear to cover the hands, but in reality Rodin chopped them off because they seemed to be more important than the whole figure.
Neither the premise nor any other part of a play has a separate life of its own. All must blend into a harmonious whole.

What about you? How do you balance your scenes with your plot? Do you outline your plot first and then write your scenes to conform to that? Or do you write the scenes, try to cram them into a plot (the way I do), and then end up with a whole lot of deleted scenes?

Speaking of writing retreats, it has been my belief these past four years that it’s much more important to schedule writing into your life every week, if not every day, rather than rely on a writing residency or retreat to get your project done. I believe that residencies and retreats put too much pressure on you to get it all done within that week or month and that they don’t encourage you to form good daily writing habits. In fact, I’ve let my writing go these past two weeks partially because I knew I was going on this retreat. So now I’m going to feel this huge pressure to GET THE BOOK DONE in just four days, which isn’t very realistic, and I’m going to be really stressed out and down on myself if that doesn’t happen.

On the flip side, I have one friend who goes away for a month each year to a cabin without Internet and she writes an entire draft of her book there every summer. So some people are really good at working like that, like they’re cramming for an exam. As an Internet addict and someone who will sorely miss my husband and kids for those four days I’m going to sequester myself in the woods, I’m not so sure I’ll be as effective. It will be an interesting experiment, though, and I’m sure I’ll get SOME writing done, which is a lot more than I’m getting done right now.

What about you? Are you a daily/weekly writer or a cram-it-all-into-one-week/month writing residency writer? Have you been to a writing retreat or residency (even self-imposed ones)? What advice do you have for a first-timer?

What about you? What is your process for starting a new project? Where do you begin?