As an English teacher, I spent years proof reading student papers. Then as I pursued a career in freelance writing I yearned for my own personal English teacher to make corrections and notes in the margins of my own manuscripts.

If you are a writer who seeks this feedback and encouragement, a critique group may be the perfect place to find it. Whether you join an existing group or form a new one, give careful consideration to the critique process and determine your own needs by answering the following nine questions.

What do you hope to receive as a writer from a critique group? Some writers are merely looking to share their work for fun. Others approach writing as a business, with a serious desire to publish. Make sure your level of commitment matches that of others in the group.

What is the schedule of the group? Serious writers need to meet regularly and often. Consider a group that meets at least twice a month, or even once a week. Members should be committed to regular attendance. Even if a member has no work to present, her services are needed for critiquing the work of others. And for long-term projects, it helps to follow the piece as it evolves over time.

What is the tone of the critique offered by members? Effective critique is honest, objective, and encouraging. Groups that offer only glowing praise will never challenge serious writers to improve. On the other hand, groups that shred an author’s work for the sake of improvement, will leave a writer with a battered ego and too discouraged to write.

How large is the group? One or two critique partners allow safe and intimate sharing of large amounts of material. However, with six or seven members, a writer gets a broad range of feedback allowing for differing tastes and personalities. As the group expands beyond seven members, the quantity of writing to be critiqued may become unwieldy.

What genres are represented in the group? It can be advantageous to have writers outside of your own genre evaluate your work. However, if everyone in the group writes romance novels, and you write science fiction short stories, you may feel a lack of opportunity to dialogue with the group.

How do writers present work for critique? Some groups permit authors to read their pieces out loud. This speeds presentation of work, but it severely limits the type of feedback. Firstly, authors often add inflections and gestures as they read which are not readily apparent in the written word. Secondly, the pace of reading generally doesn’t allow the slower reflection necessary to seriously and fully critique the piece. Lastly, it is more difficult to be concise, honest, and specific in critique as you address the author publicly. Other critique groups require a separate written copy of each work for members to read individually in silence. This permits thorough review of simple matters such as punctuation, as well as general composition issues. Members can write specific suggestions without influence from other critiques, and the author has time at home to consider the suggestions calmly. Members should still have time to discuss their work at the meeting as written critiques are finished. Make sure printed copies of work for critique are double-spaced. Stipulate a suitable maximum for length such that everyone has an opportunity to have work critiqued at each meeting.

How sophisticated is the level of critique? Writers need a full range of critique, including suggestions and corrections on usage, grammar, style, tone, and voice. Do members have marketing suggestions? Are they attentive to factual details that need further research? Can they offer alternative wordings? Are they able to suggest new methods of organizing a piece for clarity? Members should seek to improve their own understanding of the craft of writing. Do they attend conferences, subscribe to writing magazines, or read books on writing? And, over time, do they use the group’s critiques to improve and rewrite their own pieces? If your friends grow as writers, this also moves you to grow.

Finally, as mentioned before, do members give honest encouragement, regularly noting areas of strength in each piece offered? Writers grow by learning not only what to change, but by hearing what they are already doing well, even if it’s selecting an interesting topic to write about. The best critique groups can be honest and kind.

Are group members submitting their work? If members don’t eventually submit their work, then it might be time to reconsider the level of commitment members have to professional writing. True growth for a writer comes from doing your best and then submitting your best work to the market. Only writers who submit their work and get editorial feedback can truly be on top of what effective writing looks like.

Have you settled on a critique group that seems to be a good match with your needs? Or are you encouraged to organize a group of your own? Here are a few additional suggestions to make sure your group stays focused, dedicated, and enjoyable.

Write out the goals of your group. Give your critique group a name, write a brief mission statement, and set some group goals. Encourage one another in setting personal writing goals.

Make time for fellowship. While the emphasis is on critique and writing, be assured that, over time, critique friends become true friends. As you learn to be honest in your writing and as you trust these people’s honesty to help you grow, lifelong bonds of friendship will develop. If you designate special time for socializing, it will also help your critique sessions stay on-task.

Each year, plan a specific time to review your critique group. Review your goals and mission statements. Perhaps the membership of your group has changed, and you will change to meet the needs of a new group. You will probably make adjustments as you meet throughout the year, and it’s easy to fall into bad habits or drift away from your intended purpose.

Today, I give thanks for my writing friends and their dedication to the critique process. Their tough encouragement has helped changed this English teacher into a writer, and I count on their continued advice for growth and motivation in the years to come.

_________________________

“Touch Encouragement,” The Christian Communicator, professional magazine of American Christian Writers, July, 2000, pp. 5-6.

**************************************

THIS AND THAT:  Magazines

The line to order pizza was short, and I was ready.  After fifteen years of marriage, Vic and I had the pizza order at our favorite shop down to a drill.  Our order was always the same:  half pepperoni with onions, half sausage with onions and bell pepper.  Well, there were nights when we merged our order into one happy combination.  We both enjoyed a wide variety of foods, so there were never serious problems about what to get.  Only…

Only, for fifteen years I had longed for the taste of anchovies.  I grew up in an anchovy family.  The small shop where my father took us for pizza as kids was run by a rotund, happy Italian man who did magical things tossing pizza dough into the air and catching it with a twirl in his hands.  He even let my sister Diane and me sit on the counter top and watch him add the toppings and cheese.  And he always made our eyes wide in astonishment and delight, putting on extra anchovies.

For some reason, tonight, as I peered over the shoulder of the woman ahead of me in line and looked past the order taker and into the kitchen, the taste of anchovy began to beckon.  Anchovy.  Anchovy,… they seemed to call, as I conjured up the salty, meaty taste.  For fifteen years, I had deprived myself of anchovies for the good of marriage and family.  I didn’t even order it on half of the pizza.  Ever since my freshman year at college I knew that nobody could ever figure out where the anchovies started and stopped.  If anyone bit into the slightest piece of fish, I hated hearing stories about how nasty anchovies were and how they made people gag.  It was disgusting, the way people spit out the slivers of meat pieces.  Better not to even order them.

Maybe just this once, if I made the pizza man promise not to drip anchovy juice on the other half, and made him make a big mark in the pizza to show the pepperoni/anchovy boundary, maybe this one time Vic would let me put anchovies on my half.

“Vic, would you mind too terribly much, if he promises to be really careful and shows us where he puts them, would it be all right….if,” I took a breath, “….if I had anchovies on my half?” I asked.

Vic’s jaw dropped.  He took a step back, “You like anchovies?”  He almost shouted again, “You like anchovies?”

My eyes opened wide.  Voices quieted, and heads turned to see what was wrong.  Vic blurted out, “You mean all these years, fifteen years, I’ve been going without anchovies because I thought you didn’t like them?  You like anchovies?!  I like anchovies!”  It was too much!  We broke into hysterics.  We rolled out of line and waved the others ahead, falling into chairs, laughing and giggling.

And people in the pizza shop stared.  Fifteen years?  These people were weird!

But tonight’s pizza was the best either of us had eaten in the longest time, slathered with anchovies, no holds barred, Mr. Pizza man done himself proud, anchovies crisscrossed, lying side by side, under the sauce and on top of the sauce, loads and lots of spiky, spiney, salty anchovies.

_______________

Excerpted for Marriage Partnership, Summer, 2000, “You Learn Something New Every Day,” p. 12.

**********************************

THIS AND THAT: Magazines

I stood in the back of the packed courtroom surveying the room where I had sat for the past month listening to evidence. Each day for four weeks, the jury had routinely passed in front of me, taking their seats across the room. Now, as they filed by me for the final time, my eyes settled on the judge waiting to read their decision.

The verdict is in. Dr. John Biskind is guilty of manslaughter. On February 20, eight jurors agreed with Arizona state prosecutors that Dr. Biskind “recklessly caused the death of LouAnne Heron,” showing a “conscious disregard of substantial risk” involved in her late term abortion.

The question of guilt has been settled. One month of carefully crafted questions and witness testimony created a clear picture of a young woman bleeding to death while young medical assistants worked without the expert medical direction they needed to save her life. Prosecutors were thorough. They questioned everyone involved, covering every facet of LouAnne’s surgery and the events of the day she died.

Yet, with the verdict now in, questions remain–questions unanswered because they were never asked. Judge Michael Wilkinson carefully focused the trial on the death of LouAnne Heron, restricting the scope of questions that could be asked. Abortion is an explosive topic, and he made it clear that abortion was not on trial.

Oddly, though, Judge Wilkinson’s instructions and the restraint they placed on prosecutors Paul Ahler and Susan Brnovich cast a steady, unmistakable light onto abortion. For one brief moment in time, from the witness box, one person after another gave witness to the many truths about abortion, truths suppressed and ignored in a culture where abortion has been redefined as choice.

The trial began with intense testimony from the paramedics responding to the 911 call who found LouAnne Heron already dead. Medical assistants, nurses, and technicians, each in their turn, then went through the events of the day leading to the arrival of the paramedics. Six carefully cropped photographs from the autopsy illustrated the source of her bleeding. LouAnne died as the result a two-inch uterine tear caused by a metal instrument used during an abortion performed at 23 to 26 weeks of pregnancy.

Bit by bit the prosecutors built a mountain of evidence that Dr. Biskind recklessly caused LouAnne’s death. Every witness, and every bit of testimony held the complete attention of people in the courtroom. And while limitations constrained the discussion on abortion, one by one, testimony revealed the truth about the medical procedure called choice.

Witnesses were obliged to describe the abortion procedure that led to LouAnne’s death. Jenil Begay, a medical assistant, described taking ultrasounds, showing us where to measure the “baby’s head,” across the forehead, above the facial features.

Expert witness Dr. Finberg gave classroom lessons in neonatal ultrasound. We learned that determining the age of a fetus becomes more difficult as time passes, as the baby grows. Like people, babies are each individual. And like people, they grow uniquely. If even more accuracy is needed to determine gestational age, doctors can average measurements of the distance around the head and stomach, the length of the femur leg bone, and the baby’s foot.

All of this was familiar to the mothers and fathers in the courtroom. It was the “stuff of life”—a retelling of their own trips to the doctor, mapping the growth in their own babies and children.

Yet, this was a trial involving abortion. What caused the death of LouAnne Heron? Dr. Brown the medical examiner who performed the autopsy described the tear of the uterus caused by a metal part. Lawyers questioned her. Was she familiar with abortion? “Yes,” she replied. Dr. Brown had witnessed the “products of conception” during her residency.

I blinked and sat up straight. Dr. Brown’s use of the term “products” jarred me into attention. With the choice of a word, all evidence of the humanity of the fetus disappeared.

Witnesses had spent the better part of two weeks describing in detail how to measure the fetus. We became familiar with the thalamus and twin hemispheres of the fetal brain, the inside and outside parts of the skull, the femur, feet, and abdomen. Now this developing baby was a “product.”

A doctor may call the fetus a “product.” But eventually, compelled by the need for truth in a trial, he must explain that the teeth on the forceps need to be strong enough to grab the product by the “arms and legs.” A “product” older than 20 weeks has a head and spine “large enough that they generally have to be crushed to be removed.” And while we are locked in a violent image of what is happening to the fetus, we are reminded of the other victim—the woman.

Dr. Sidney Wechsler agreed that abortion at 24 weeks of pregnancy is a very “violent” surgery. “The larger the uterus is, the more fragile it is.” The soft tissue of the uterus can be punctured by the metal instruments used in the abortion. Or it’s possible, the doctor explained, to grasp a femur “and pull it out crossways,” causing a laceration to the uterus. A veteran reporter opened her eyes in surprise and turned to look at me. “Did you know all this?” she silently asked.

It was no small wonder that expert witness Dr. Carl Hoffman, hired to testify on behalf of Dr. Biskind, continued apologizing to the jury, “I’m sorry. It sounds gross, I know.” But what good were his apologies when a short time later, using a medical picture of the uterus, he pointed to the “upper uterus where the baby lives.”

Maybe we should all be witness to a trial involving abortion. It is impossible to hold onto our ignorance in a court of law where witnesses are sworn to tell the truth–all of it. For a doctor who is telling the jury how to decide the proper size forceps needed to pull pieces of fetus through the cervix, there is very little leeway for sidestepping the truth. And while we can talk about the fetus in a mysterious third person vagueness, as a “product,” we can’t get off the witness stand until we describe how pieces of the crushed skull from the “product” can cut the tissue in the soft uterus of the woman.

The prosecutors were scrupulous in following the judge’s instructions. He required that they demonstrate how a doctor mishandled the abortion surgery without inflaming the sympathies of the jury for the fetus. He made the rules tough.

Yet, paradoxically, the restraint of the prosecutors and witnesses in avoiding opinions and sticking to the surgical details seemed to heighten the impact and awareness that abortion affects life. It affects two lives, in dramatic and serious ways.

This might be a lesson pro-life people can take away from the Dr. Biskind trial. Outside the politics of abortion, with the accusations, the insults, the tirades, and passion—in the quiet of a courtroom where the complete unvarnished truth of facts rises above passion—perhaps this is where we can truly change people’s hearts about abortion.

__________________

“Biskind Verdict: Witness to a Prosecution,” Arizona Citizen, May, 2001, pp. 2-3.

******************************

THIS AND THAT: Magazines

I was about as far away from joy as a person can get. A steady stream of cars whizzed by, and I sat stuck on the side of the Arizona freeway, rattling sounds of death coming from under the hood of Ms. Taupe.

I left the engine running, not ready to believe that our brand new van would betray me so soon in its young life. Raising the hood, I watched the rhythmic flapping of a broken belt whipping against the hood at 900 rpm and beating in the hard realities: get to a mechanic, quick.

I should have been ready for this. We’d had plenty of practice this past year. This new taupe van replaced our old brown van when it had seemed destined to encamp permanently in the sixth service bay of our mechanic’s shop. Ken had replaced the engine. He had replaced the replacement engine. And the battery, the battery again, the battery cables, the fuel pump regulator, the fuel pump, the starter, the alternator, and the transmission. Each repair in its turn had offered hope. We would pay our bill and drive away, glad to have Ol’ Brown up and running, only to find ourselves broken down two days later, calling the tow truck from the cell phone.

We were on a first name basis with the tow truck driver. He was even thinking of creating a punch card for the frequent tower, named in our honor, with the “Twelfth Tow Free.” Finally, with little hope on the horizon, we put Ol’ Brown up for sale and bought pretty Ms. Taupe. She was the answer to our prayers: new, reliable, and problem-free.

Thus, inching along the emergency lane of the freeway, I was not in the mood for joy. I thought I’d handled today’s breakdown surprisingly well when I made a firm decision not to cry.

I managed to guide Ms. Taupe slowly off the freeway and three miles back to the dealer. He nodded his head, “Yep. It’s the timing belt. We’re busy today, but we can have her done by five.” My morning was shot. The day was lost. Hunching my shoulders, I pulled up my socks and slung my purse over my shoulders. I decided to walk home from Earnie’s Ford. An hour of walking would give me plenty of time to revise the day. Two miles.

I started off, trudging and ruminating. Car repairs were only the tip of  the iceberg for our family in the past year. With each step my mind  reviewed some past difficulty: legal fights, court proceedings, home  repairs, water leaks, termites, illness, death, computer crashes, work  reassignments, family wars, financial stress—the list went on and on.

I always considered myself a cheerful survivor, but this year had almost buried me. Each and every time, just when I was sure life might be turning the corner, another major problem would pop up, and I lost hold of all control. Like a game of bobbing for apples, I felt I was kneeling at the edge of a tub, bobbing for solutions that sank out of sight and, if caught, never hung on for very long.

In ordinary times, the broken timing belt would have been a simple distraction, hardly worth noting. But today, it was the final puff to extinguish any small flicker of joy burning inside me.

Twenty steps down the sidewalk I had already gone through the list of problems. This promised to become the longest two miles in my life unless I came up with a new list. With grudging acknowledgement to Pollyanna, I decided to think of joyful things all the way home.

My mind went blank. Joyful things? Maybe I could start with little not-so-bad things. I couldn’t come up with one purely joyful thought.

“Well, all right. I had something to eat for breakfast this morning.” There, that was one sorta-all-right thing. At least I had come up with one. Seconds passed. Step after step, the ground was passing underfoot, and my mind searched for another better-than-bad thought: “I have a smooth sidewalk for walking instead of a muddy, broken dirt path. Birds are singing. I can see.”

Suddenly, little things came poring into my mind, step after step, thought after thought: “I breath without an inhaler, I have a car, I live in a house, with a fireplace, with a refrigerator, with a husband and two wonderful kids.” And there, one mile into my walk, standing in front of Target department store, I thought of the past thirty years with my husband Victor. How many days and hours of struggle in the past year had eclipsed the joy of living with a wonderful man?

Victor stood by me in the death of my parents, he played with the kids, he washed dishes and clothes without asking, he kept the cars clean and waxed, the yard watered and mowed. He worked to provide a home and life for us, and he supported my choices to work and to stay home as Mom. I was stopped in my tracks, for the second time that morning, hearing the passing cars to my side. But the horror which stopped me now was very different. How many years had I taken his love for granted? Suddenly, it seemed important to walk quickly. I needed to get home and call him. I needed to tell him how wonderful the past thirty years had been.

My step lightened. I looked up to imagine the smile I wanted to put on his face. Right there, up in the sky, I was blinded by the thought of who had given me Vic. The One who painted the sky bright blue, who sprinkled it with puffy clouds that pushed the wind through the yellow trees all along my way. I thought of the many moments of comfort he had given me in the past year as I read through his Word and spent time in prayer. How could I even begin to imagine a life without his healing grace and love? My steps slowed in quiet thought and celebration. What blessings I beheld as I approached my home!

And there, turning up the steps to the front door, I was struck with the very thing that had eluded me all these past long months. Only God in his wisdom would know how important it was to break Ms. Taupe’s timing belt at 9:00 A.M. at the junction of Interstate 10. He alone knew the true measure of two miles. Only he could fill me with the glory of walking home today, my legs, my eyes, my ears–the wind against my face, the clear blue sky giving a backdrop to the glorious golden autumn leaves high in the trees above. What joy filled my heart!

Up from my heart, tears of joy released such thankfulness for those short two miles. How could I ever thank God for this morning’s trial?

How could I ever let him know the joy of knowing joy once again?

_______________

“Blessed by Breakdowns,”  Marriage Partnership, 2000.

*****************************************

THIS AND THAT:  Magazines