Writer Critique Groups

I had three traditionally-published novels released before I ever attended a writer's critique group. It's not easy to find a critique group that knows what it's talking about and fits your personality. Fortunately, Austin is a writer's town, so it's a little easier to find a decent group than in other towns where I've lived.

If you're in the Austin area and looking for a critique group, you should check these out.

If you're looking for a good screenwriting group, Austin Writer's Workshop is one of the best. Currently meeting Monday nights at Opal Devine's at Penn Field. I attended this group for four years before I abandoned screenplays to return to novels.

I can't imagine a better novel critique group than Novel in Progress, which meets the 2nd and 4th Sunday from 1:30-3:30 at the Austin Recreation Center near 15th and Lamar. Facebook. Website.

I'll be submitting my current work in progress, a return to the Fred stories, in the coming weeks.

Writing on the Air and Endless Vacation

On Wednesday I'll be on Writing on the Air on KOOP radio at 6 pm CDT with Jeremy Grigg talking about Endless Vacation and future projects. You can listen online or on the radio at 91.7 FM.

I discovered just how long I've been working on and talking about Endless Vacation when I went back to the Writing on the Air archives looking for my previous appearances and discovered I've talked about this story with these guys since 2009. Here's a list of the other times I've been on if you'd like to give them a listen.

Dec 9, 2009: Endless Vacation and Escape from Fred (This one has some bumper music by Daniel including a rare live track from Jan 1, 2000.)

Jul 28, 2010: Endless Vacation and Muffin Man

Feb 6, 2012: Muffin Man and What Would Jesus Drink?

Rock on and check it out.

Endless Vacation: Deleted Scenes

“Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.” --Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, On the Art of Writing, 1916

In the course of bringing a novel to press, a lot of stuff gets left on the cutting room floor, not all of it bad. In the case of Endless Vacation, more was left on the floor than usual in my novels because it went through about 40 drafts as screenplay and novel before I finally shoved it out the door. Entire chapters of flashback story lines and abandoned plots.

Here's an excerpt that used to be at the beginning of Chapter 5 that I was particularly fond of, but it did slow the pace somewhat in a moment of tension, so I allowed it to be pried from my fist.

The kitchen was reduced to chaos. It was as if a sorcerer’s apprentice had been called away suddenly in the midst of a particularly troublesome spell that had gone awry. Dave scanned the wreckage.

The island was an explosion of vegetables, cheeses, spices, seasonings, rubs, garlic cloves, three kinds of oil, four types of vinegar, wine bottles, condiments and sundry peelings, skins and hulls, in various stages of use and abandonment, interlarded with measuring cups oozing sauces, can openers, corkscrews, used knives, cheese-encrusted graters, discarded wrappings and half-empty boxes of ingredients.

The stove warehoused an array of pans and skillets like a graveyard of burnt-out war machines, some scorched, others glazed with garnishes in hardened grease or coated with a glutinous sauce of dubious provenance, and all overlaid with a dusting of flour like an early snowfall. Spatulas and ladles and tongs and a meat thermometer lay where they had fallen in battle.

The sink overflowed with discarded cans and colanders and whisks and bowls and plates and spoons. The floor appeared to be the work of a Jackson Pollock devotee who had settled on organic matter as his medium.

I especially like the stove paragraph. Oh well, one does what one must. Would you have the nerve to pull the trigger?