by Tosh McIntosh
In October 2013, I borrowed a guest column by Donna Cooner posted on Chuck Sambuchino’s Guide to Literary Agents Blog. I’ve included the link to the post at the bottom of this one in the hope that readers might be inclined to finish here before bouncing there.
The core theme of Donna’s column and this one, along with the previous post on Predation in the World of Indie Publishing, is encapsulated in a simple question:
What constitutes unacceptable behavior in a critique group?
In the twelve years I’ve been participating in NIP, a few past members have egregiously stretched the bounds of common courtesy and mutual respect for others by their actions and words at roundtable. Here are some of the “highlights.”
A brand-new member shows up with a box of his self-published books with the expectation that he might sell some.
A relatively new member signs up for a roundtable slot and shows up empty-handed at break for the meeting at which the hard copy manuscripts are to be distributed. The excuse: I didn’t have time to print them out because the ink cartridge needed to be replaced.
Back when we had an average of 15-20 members in attendance per meeting, enforcing the individual time limit for each member’s verbal critique had to be a priority task for the moderator. A gentle “Thirty seconds” reminder was the standard, polite way to suggest that the member wrap it up. That almost always resulted in a significant time warp, but a little more forceful “TEN seconds” would usually silence the offending talker.
One of our more cantankerous members at the time (hereafter referred to as H) decided that the moderator was applying selective timing based on who was giving the critique. Friends of the moderator got more time. H, on the other hand, never got enough.
On one occasion, H waited until just the right moment (at least by his watch) and shouted “THIRTY SECONDS!” as loud as he could. The outburst so intimidated the member giving her critique that she immediately stopped.
Think that was insulting to the group? On another occasion H brought an air horn into the room, pulled it out of his satchel, held it up and blasted out another way of indicating his displeasure with the timing with a unique, eardrum-piercing thirty-second notification.
But that’s not all. H apparently had been harboring a grudge against another member of the group (let’s call him G) because of what H considered to be a harsh critique undeserved by a third member (B) who had quit NIP more than a year before.
We’re in the middle of G’s roundtable, and when H’s turn comes around, he stands up, announces that since G had insulted his friend B with a critique at some undefined time in the past, he wouldn’t bother offering comments. He then threw the hard copy about halfway across the room onto the table in front of G. It almost hit me (T) in the face, and I very nearly went for the jerk’s throat.
A more recent example occurred when a relatively new member submitted for the first time with more than adequate opportunity to become familiar with the NIP environment. Based on his verbal comments to the roundtable submissions of others (which never offered anything of value because he always failed to address the submission directly), I fault myself for not having required an advance look at what he was going to submit.
I won’t enumerate the issues here, but exceeding the pain threshold for me came during the free-for-all discussion at the end of his roundtable when he did exactly what we ask members not to do, which is defend their submissions generically against every comment offered. One member in attendance even suggested this wasn’t the way to get the most out of the session, and the advice had absolutely no effect.
When the roundtable soon deteriorated to the point of being a bragging session about how this member had been personally responsible for developing a number of role-playing games, I took the unprecedented step of terminating the meeting early. I could not allow him to hijack the discussion any further than he already had.
Some of these are extreme examples, obviously, and thankfully very rare. We’ve also had our fair share of the bottom-10 types of critique group members. But for whatever reason, as of this writing we have a membership composed mostly of writers who embrace the commonly accepted standards of behavior.
That brings me to the notable exception, and it relates to the first example mentioned in this post, that of bringing the element of commercial gain to roundtable.
The single most important aspect of the critique-group experience is the ability to join with other like-minded writers in a collaborative exploration of wordsmithing with one objective in mind: become better writers who write better books.
As discussed in the Predation post, prior to introduction of the Kindle, with the exception of vanity presses, writers had no option other than obtaining an agent for access to the legacy publishers, or going directly to the smaller presses that accepted unagented submissions from authors.
But with the advent of indie publishing, the old-guard monopoly on printing and distribution has been eliminated. That’s the good news, immediately followed by the not-so-good.
Along with the freedom to produce our books without having to convince those in their lofty perches above the teeming masses that the words we write are worthy of a reader’s time, we are faced with the necessity of having to produce the books so we can distribute them.
Also as mentioned in the Predation post, Think Like a Publisher by Dean Wesley Smith clearly delineates the requirement to break out of our creative cocoons into the harsh light of reality and deal with the demands of production, distribution, and marketing.
To fill the gap between completing our novels and offering them for sale, an overpopulated service industry has risen with its tentacles ready to reach into our pocketbooks and snatch some of our hard-earned cash. Unfortunately, that element, which like any business is always characterized by the lust for personal gain, can also infect the roundtable experience when trolling the table for clients becomes a member’s primary goal for attending.
The bottom line of this post is as simple as the question posed at the beginning:
Please do not engage in solicitation activity of any kind at a roundtable meeting, during the breaks, or at coffee afterward. If you are approached, decline the opportunity. If you wish to investigate the possibility of entering into a contractual arrangement with another member for any commercial purpose whatsoever, have the courtesy and respect for other members and the core philosophy of NIP-Austin to take it elsewhere.
Thank you in advance for complying with this request.
Tosh