This past spring, I was at a book signing with several other authors. The woman beside me was part of the local Writer’s Guild and tried to get other authors to join. I asked if they did critiques with one another. Her eyes lit up and drifted off to the left and up before looking back down at me. “Having someone else read over your story first? What a wonderful idea!”
She is self-published, and was popular with the locals who came to the event, but as sweet as this woman was, I couldn’t get myself to buy one of her books — without an editor or even other writers giving their imput before publication. I could be wrong. She might be one of those rare gems who is truly a word-wizard, and I missed my chance. I actually met an elderly woman once who caused my jaw to drop with her on-the-spot writings, but she wasn’t at all interested in getting published. How sad for the world.
For those of us who write and rewrite and delete and toss and revise, and revise a few more times, often doing all this before presenting anything to our critique groups, writing is a struggle. It’s time-consuming and hard work. I simply cannot imagine doing this all on my own. I need my critique group. I value their eyes and their thoughts. For me, I see five main reasons to participate in a critique group:
1. Someone other than your mother or spouse can look over the manuscript for plot structure or story arch or clarification.
2. They can point out where the characters work or don’t work, where the author has the character say or do something, but isn’t in that character’s voice or POV.
3. They can show where you’ve repeated a single word four times in two paragraphs, or have a convoluted sentence structure, or have told, not shown, etc.
4. Struggling alongside others, and each wanting to improve your writing, you can do group studies on various books of writing craft, or of books in your genre, and share the insights and promote discussions and then apply what you’ve gleaned to your own writing.
5. Critique groups keep you producing, month after month.
I’ve been in several critique groups, one for over a dozen years. I’ve also had beta readers checking word for word errors. And I’ve had editors who point out things which none of the others mentioned, and who strive to make my writing absolutely shine.
Writing is a lone business, but it doesn’t have to be lonely.
Author Sandy Carlson 
Very interesting perspective from a writer’s viewpoint. Much like that with painting artists. We recently purchased your “Tales of the Lost Schooner” downtown. (These are questions) How did your interview go? Can it be heard at any website? J. Chapman
Thank you for your comment, J chapman! And thanks for purchasing my book. They hadn’t listed it on their website, so I thought they had all sold out. The interview went very well. If you go to the calendar page on this website, and scroll down to the NPR interview, you should have the link there, although, I haven’t checked it recently, so you may have to scroll down THAT website to find the link for April 3rd. Thanks again for your comments.