Crit Course Wrap-up

(First. A note. I've made the decision to shift from Blogger to Wordpress. I'll post here a few more times, but if you'd like to continue following my exploits, please do so by either following my WordPress blog or my LiveJournal. Thanks!)

As requested, here's the run down of how my recent trial run of the critique crash course went. But first, let's all agree to call it Crit Camp from now on because critique crash course is a MOUTHFUL. Agreed? Agreed.

I ran two courses simultaneously. Each had 3 participants who all submitted roughly 5 pages of their manuscripts. We had a 1-hr introductory chat in which I offered an organized method of approaching critique and outlined what I wanted to see from them. Here's the nitty gritty:

• everyone submitted 50 pages and received 50 page samples from the others in the group (100 total pages for them, 300 total for me); 
•  we took a week to read and draft crit letters, which were then submitted to me; I reviewed, critiqued, and returned those letters to the authors for revision (a total of 12 letters for me); 
• the participants revised and resubmitted based on my comments; 
•  I reviewed the revised letters before releasing them to the group and made both revised and pre-revised letters available to all participants for review. 

 The whole thing took roughly two weeks, but we wrapped everything up with a final chat this weekend, so we were all in contact for a month. It was fairly time intensive. The participants reported that they spent anywhere from 8 to 15 hours on the course. For me, the time investment was approximately 30 hours. (Someone remind me not to schedule this on the heels of a deadline and the toes of a giant conference next time, kay? Thx.)

The participants all seemed to walk away with a different (broader? more complicated? more pointed?) understanding of what critique can be, and I certainly saw immense improvement between the drafts of letters. So, I'm gonna go out on a limb and call this trial run a success.

I'll definitely be repeating the adventure. In fact, I already have ideas for how I'll improve the course next time around, so keep an eye on this space if you're interested. I have Plans.

[Crash Course] How to Crit like a Pro

I’m still getting tweets and emails about this crash course. So, let’s do this thing.

DISCLAIMER: I have never done this before. This will be an experiment. It could go swimmingly or just plain well. Either way, the first round will surely encounter bumps and hitches and I ask for your patience in advance.

I’m going to run this like a mini-workshop. It’ll be off-blog and I’ll keep numbers small on this first round, but if my guinea pigs love it, I’ll do it as long as there’s interest from all of you beautiful blog readers.

Here’s how it’ll work. We’ll do this in groups of three and we’ll start with a face-to-face conversation about critique. Everyone will turn in a writing sample and will receive a sample from the two others in the group. You’ll write a crit letter for each sample, send them to me, and I’ll give you crit on your crit.

(How meta is that?)

You will then revise your crit based on my feedback before sharing it with the group. Everyone will read all of the revised critique letters, including mine.

I’m thinking we’ll end with another face-to-face chat, so this is going to be an intense process both time-wise and energy-wise.

To participate, you must agree to/meet the following requirements:

• Have 50 pages or 15k words (whichever is shorter) to share for crit; 
• Commit to reading 100 pages to crit within a week of the start of the crash course; 
• Be able to commit several hours to preparing (writing, reading, and revising) critique letters;
• Be at least 18 years old (this is for legal reasons – if you’re a teen and you’re interested, please let me know!); 
• Be generally groovy. 

If you meet all of the above bulleted points, then shoot me an email at nataliecparker AT gmail with the subject line, "Crit Crash Course," and include the following:

• Your name 
• Title of your work in progress 
• Genre (Adult, YA, MG – contemporary, historical, fantasy, sci-fi, horror, etc.) 
• Pitch/Brief description of the work 
• The first 5 pages attached as a word document 

DEADLINE FOR CONSIDERATION: 12pm CST on Saturday, April 13th!

I’ll do my best to pull together a group (or two) that seems well-matched and set up a start date. I’ll respond to everyone, though, so you will know if I’m tapping you to take part in round one. 

Did I miss anything? If so, drop your questions in the comments.

If you have friends who might be interested, feel free to spread the word. I’m doing this because I think writing is exciting, I think critique is exciting, and I think it’s most exciting when we’re pushing each other to do better. This is about pushing in the most efficient way. ;)

Also, if you’re looking for my previous posts on critique, just follow the tag “how I crit.”

Wanna sorta date?

I've had a request to continue the 'Let's Talk Critique' series with a post on behavior. I've got a list of quick tips on this including break-up tips and I'm happy to share them. And I will, but I'm also cooking up another crit-related idea and before I go too far down this path, I think it's wise to gauge interest.

Say I was to offer a crash course on how to give and receive critique like a pro. Say this crash course included a crit from me as well as other participants? Would you be interested? Would someone you know be interested?

Holler in the comments. Tweet me. Or otherwise let me know and I may just pull this together.

On not attending BEA

A short time ago, thousands of people in the publishing industry descended upon a single convention center in New York City for one mother of an expo. It's one of the largest "book" events of the year and it attracts authors, editors, agents, librarians, book sellers, bloggers, superheroes, villains, cab drivers...the list goes on.

I did not attend Book Expo America, but being attached to someone who was attending, I did travel to New York at the time of BEA and I did reap a few benefits.

It ended up being one of the most surreal five days of my life and not only because I encountered Spiderman on the street, and ate more cupcakes than in all the years of my life combined.

Possibly the surrealitude of the week could be contributed to the total lack of sleep one can achieve while renting an apartment with friends you only see a few times a year. Possibly it was due to the fact that in said apartment, two blocks from Central Park, the noise of the city barrels through the windows at all hours of the day and night to throw erratic parties on your eardrums. Possibly it was due to the lack of actual oxygen in the air…

 

Possibly it was the cupcakes.

Either way, three things happened in New York which have altered my life in slight, yet significant ways.

First – In a little coffee shop on Tenth Avenue, I met three incredible women and I'm still surprised the shop survived our impact. The first, my agent, who is as kind and dynamic in person as she is via email. The second, my editor, who impressed me all over again with her passion for the work and BEWARE THE WILD. The third, my editor's assistant, who was insightful and equally as excited about BTW. Sitting there, with a small group of people who had found a way to love this story as much as I do, who are every bit as committed to putting in the time and energy to making it better, I realized again just how incredibly lucky I am.

Second – This one requires a modicum of backstory. When I was fourteen years old, I left my childhood home in Virginia and moved to Yokosuka, Japan. I was only there for two years, but I never made it back to the east coast and eventually fell out of touch with all my childhood friends. Such is the life of a Navy child. But – prepare yourselves, I’m about to say something NICE about Facebook – Facebook (for all its faults) changed that.

I fell back into touch with M and after nearly two solid decades of estrangement we had a four-hour reunion in the middle of New York City. We spent much of the time staring at each other in amazement saying truly profound things to each other.

Me: I can’t believe you’re in front of me.
Him: I can’t believe I’m taller than you.
Me: ……*goofy grin*

We were so wrapped up in nostalgia that after 20 minutes of walking way too fast, I felt the axis of the world shift and suddenly ALL THE PEOPLE were around me.

Me: M! ARE WE IN TIMES SQUARE?
Him: *slow blink* Yes.
Me: HOW DID WE GET HERE?
Him: ….we…walked?

Which brings me to the third life-altering experience I had in NYC.

There’s really no way to be tactful about this, but I’m going to try because this is something that may save your life in the future.

If you take away nothing else from my non-BEA experience, take this one lesson: NYC DOESN’T CARE ABOUT YOUR BLADDER.

No. It’s true. And it’s important you know this because discovering it when you’re twenty blocks away from your apartment, all the Starbucks are closing because it’s 10pm, and you’re too stubborn to hail a cab isn’t something I’d recommend.

I mean, it might change your life, but not in a Hunger Games sort of way. Rather, this will change your life in a Trainspotting sort ofway where the world is suddenly very loud and very strange (which is really saying something for NYC), and all the doors are locked and the shopkeepers all look like Delores Umbridge, and then you discover you don’t even have a key to your apartment and no one is answering your texts so WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GET HOME? WHAT HAPPENS THEN???

It is FAR from pleasant.

So, there you have it, my recipe for how to have one singularly intense day in New York City. Passing ife-saving advice on to you is really just a bonus.

Queries and Cappuccinos

There's something about winter that makes a cappuccino at any hour of the day sound like a good idea. (Okay, in all honesty, there's also something about any month ending in y that makes cappuccinos sound good, but that's beside the point. Winter is the point.) I find winter drinks irresistibly cozy. Triple-y so if I'm traveling. Which means that I've spent most of December Highly Caffeinated. Also, at zero risk for developing a calcium deficiency anytime soon. This is a good thing as I've also spent a good portion of December doing revisions and critiquing three full manuscripts.

(As an aside, I found the most amazing cappuccino I've ever tasted/seen while in Merida, Mexico. DO YOU SEE THE FOAM? HAVE YOU EVER SEEN ANYTHING SO DIVINE? There was no other way to drink this than to sacrifice all dignity and give yourself over to a cinnamon face-plant. I, for one, didn't hesitate to toss my dignity out the front door.)

I'm approximately seven cappuccinos away from finishing this round of revision. It's timely, I think, to be wrapping up at the new year. I've seen a number of people in the writing community doing similar things like brushing up queries and pitches and since I probably didn't get you anything for the holidays, I'm going to give away a few query crits. This isn't totally selfless. I'll treat myself to one cappuccino per query I crit, so really, I'm enabling myself to stay caffeinated.

Okay! So! Have a query? Want my eyes? Here are the rules:

1.  Your query should look like a cappuccino! By which I mean, in the subject line of your email to nataliecparker AT gmail DOT com, please include: CAPPUCCINO QUERY!  
2. Your query should taste like a cappuccino! By which I mean, it should include the component pieces of any query: the intro, the pitch, the closing remarks. It should be polished and pretty!
3. Your query should smell like a cappuccino! ... /metaphor Please copy and paste your query into the body of your email. No attachements. 

That's it. First five emails to hit my inbox get my eyes. 

Happy winter, everyone. I hope you'll treat yourself to a cappuccino (or bubble tea.....I don't really know what tea drinkers do for a treat) and feel a little extra cozy.    

UPDATE - I've got my 5 queries, so this offer is closed. Give me another few months, though, and there'll be another.