A Positive Voice

I can not get myself organised to write this regularly at the moment. Summer is coming to an end here, less than two weeks before the schools go back and we're trying to readjust to that life, but my body is resisting. I'm struggling to tread water when I just want to let the current pull me along. It doesn't help that I have this weird ear pressure problem that won't clear. 

I was speaking to my writing group about this question of self-belief in one's writing I discussed in my last post and they pointed out that I was lucky to have a positive first creative writing teacher, positive early role models in general. They felt, and I now agree, that the first voices you hear as a child or young person about your self-worth stick with you. If those people, parents, teachers, mentors, were over-critical or negative, that soundtrack will follow you throughout your life. If they were positive, it gives you a bolster of belief that could help support you when things are difficult. It's worrying as a parent and a teacher to understand how much weight the words we speak to children have throughout their lives. 

It is one of the reasons I love teaching creative writing and why I'm struggling with the idea of going into just regular teaching. As a special creative writing teacher, I could focus on just that, be the positive voice who loved their childish leaps into imagination amidst the classroom teacher's worries and critiques of handwriting and spelling. As a classroom teacher, I wouldn't have that time to focus on what I love because there's so many other things that I need to do just to get through the day. As a substitute I have even less time to get to know the students because I am usually just trying to get through the lesson and keep a semblance of control. I've had one or two sparks of it, but most of it feels again like just pushing against the weight of water to stay afloat.

I have an interview coming up for a new role, away from teaching. I'm walking that tightrope of trying to be positive and not get my hopes up. Everything is moving slowly as well which is difficult. It's 2 weeks before my interview. It could be a chance to move back towards supporting writers in a new way which would feel like a positive direction for myself as well. This summer has been heavy with a lot of doubt and questioning which hasn't helped with forward movement. 

I'm focusing on finishing my coursework and getting the kids ready to go back to school. And doing lots of editing, not many new poems are being written, but I'm finishing up a bunch of those poems I've written in my last few courses. 

I joined the Helsinki Poetry Connection for an open mike night this week. My first in Finland and my first in at least 10 years. I'm well out of practice, but it was a good laugh as a few friends from my group also braved the experience and did amazing. Open mikes are the same in the US, UK and Finland in my experience. It all depends on the crowd, but there's usually a good sense of support, some fun, funny and downright crazy readers. It's a weird experience in another language. My Finnish is just not good enough to follow the poems, but I love listening to the sound of it and how everyone made it do different things. Helsinki Poetry Connection was welcoming and multi-cultural, so I didn't feel strange reading in English. I'll definitely do it again. 

A few other bits of good news: Emerge Literary Journal has published my poem 'Growing Through the Sidewalk'.

My poem 'Without Finnish Idioms' won Wax Poetry Art's European Poetry Competition and was the first, and currently the only, poem published in their new online magazine Europe Poetry Magazine. This was one of the poems I read at the open mike. It was fun to see if the Finns reacted to my translations of Finnish idioms. 

And 'Cafe Dreams' is in the current issue of dreams walking, a new magazine with some great work.

Check them all out. 

Things just keep ticking along. Autumn will be here before we know it. Keep positive.

Finding Balance

One word that kept coming up in my recent mentoring discussion with Angela Carr was 'balance' and it's a word I use a lot in my creative writing teaching as well. We as writers struggle to achieve balance in so many different ways.

A poem or story hangs on many fine threads; imagery, background information, action, language, emotion, and the author attempts to keep them all balanced between what the reader needs to understand the piece and what the author themselves desires of their work. If the language is too difficult to follow or the emotion not well-presented or if the writers tells too much, breaking the threads, the connection to the reader can be lost. 

A balance between what is presented on the page and what the reader sculpts from the words in their own mind. A balance between what the author wants the reader to see and what they can lay out with words. All these things carry the weight of the writing and relying too heavily on one or not giving enough attention to another can throw off the poem or story. 

Once I get past the initial rush to lay out images or the plot, I love the fine tuning, the balancing of all the finer points of writing, playing with the language, weighting words by their placement, drawing out imagery. I try to keep the reader in my mind, what they need, how much I want to lead them and how much I want them to run off on their own with my words. But also giving precedence to what I want the poem to do and say. It's a delicate act of balance above the poem while stepping within it. 

Sometimes it works and sometimes I focus too much on what I want, the 'thing' I'm trying to make the poem do that I force it into shape and it shows in its reluctance. This is when I need mentors, writing group companions and other readers to step up and tell me something isn't working. I find it so helpful to have these dialogues because I am mired deeper within my own writing than another reader and often I cannot see where the problem is, even though I may have a sense of their being one.

So even though criticism can be hard to take, it ultimately can help you achieve that balance your writing needs. But it's never easy. 

In other news, three online magazines have featured my work recently The Stockholm Review of Literature which I just stumbled upon, ink, sweat and tears and The Honest Ulsterman. The latter two I've been trying to get into for a while, so was overjoyed when they found something they liked. I'm still wandering through the issues and there is a wide variety of authors and styles to choose from, so I hope you find something you enjoy. Thanks to the hard-working editors and their staff for offering such great opportunities to get writers' work out into the world and for accepting my poems. 

Just a reminder that GloPoWriMo - Global (or National if you're in the US) Poetry Writing Month starts April First and runs the entire month. One of the challenges is to write a poem a day which until this autumn I never thought I could (see links for my thoughts on this two years ago) so I'm going to step up to the challenge, but because I'm an idiot I've signed up for two online writing courses in April - one with Angela Carr and one with Wendy Pratt, both of whom I've mentioned here before as I've done several courses with them. 

Both courses have limited places and are filling up. There is no pressure with either tutor to write a poem a day or to share them on their private Facebook pages (visible only to the writers on the course and the tutor) but they are guaranteed to have a good positive atmosphere and the daily writing prompts are a good way of getting your writing brain working. They both have a small fee, check out the links. 

I have no preconceptions that I'll be writing two poems a day, but I figured between the two daily prompts I should come up with at least one good first draft daily. And anything I don't manage during the month, I can use to keep myself writing afterwards. I hope you think about joining one of the courses or get involved with other GloPoWriMo events, check out the website listed above for activities, prompts and local events. 

Grounding

I've just had a discussion with Angela Carr in a mentoring session about grounding the reader in poems. She suggested and has anecdotal evidence of other poems/editors saying the same that the first stanza should ground the reader in the poem. By grounding I mean a good understanding of the who, what, where, when sort of details that the poem is hung on.

This idea caught my attention as one repeated comment I've had from other poets reading my work, until recently, was that I shouldn't introduce my poems so much in the first lines or stanza. That I should go for impact to grab the reader's attention and then ground them once they have an interest in the poem. They always seem to want to move the information further down or remove it totally because it was too 'telling'.

The same is said about novel openings, that the first lines and sections should grab your attention and then you can build up information from there. But with fiction you have much more space to develop these things.

I'm torn on this subject and don't have a clear answer for what is best to do. I did agree with my previous critics that many of my earlier poems did start off with a stanza that set up the location and feel of them poem and it left them feeling a bit staid and I have liked the pieces I've written recently that have more of a hook to pull the reader in. 

I'm worried a little that each of my Finnish poems would have to have the word Finland shoe-horned into the first stanza in order to ground the reader. I do rely sometimes on the idea that my Finnish collection is mostly set in Finland with me and my family as the 'protagonists' and similarly for my Scottish collection and that will be obvious when they are actually published collections, but in the individual poems this will not always be clear at the beginning if published in a magazine without background detail.

So I can see what she means. You don't want the reader to walk away with too many questions after your first stanza but I also don't want to have everything explained, sometimes it's nice for the reader to take the words and fit themselves into them, using their own experiences.

How much background info does the reader need? If I reference a myth connected to a creature, do I need to explain it to them or can I just use the imagery from it and hope if they're interested they'll look it up themselves, as long as my connections to the images and the myth work within the poem on their own. 

Yeats never mentioned Zeus in 'Leda and the Swan' and I remember a teacher having to explain the myth to the class, though I knew it. Does the power of the poem still hold if you don't know the story? I don't want to spoon-feed my reader info, but in some poems there are certain bits of info that would help the reader to understand better, so I do have to includ that. Do I have to explain every Finnish word or cultural reference, include a glossery in my book or can I leave some to context?

I need to go back and look at poets and poems I like to see how much info do they actually give when opening the poem and whether the details I want the reader to know to understand the poem come through clearly. 

It was a thought-provoking conversation and it once again highlights the benefits of having other readers critque your work, especially those with experience in the genre. 

October - Back to Poetry

Wendy Pratt's online course started yesterday and there's been a flurry of writing and reading poetry about autumn. It fits right in with the weather and mood here. I'm already enjoying her daily prompts and am writing about autumny things we did at the weekend; walking in the woods, open fires, harvesting apples and pumpkins. 

The switch back to poetry has been welcomed. I've been working on my Finnish poetry collection. I have it whittled down to 74 pages currently and am reading it through and editing, rearranging, thinking about themes. See this previous post for more ideas of how to prepare a collection. It's early days yet, I'll see what I write for this course before I'm ready to say it's totally done. 

I'm still waiting to hear from the publisher who has my Scottish collection. I'd like to say I don't think about it, but I give it a small thought every night as I'm trying to fall asleep. I want to hear, but I also don't want to know if the news is negative. It's been almost six months which isn't unusual, but if difficult after the excitment of finishing the collection and sending it off. I could send it to more than one publisher and I probably will after a while, but I wanted to try this publisher first as it really felt like a good fit from my research. 

October 4th is National Poetry Day in the UK. Check out this link for local events and also check out local libraries, community centres and bookshops. 

Enjoy.

Rewriting After Rejection

I love to edit my work, I'm always tightening pieces and trying to bring out their best. In the rewriting stage especially, I take on reader's feedback and consider it when working on my novels or poetry. So it's not unexpected that after a big rejection like I had last week that I’ve been looking at my first novel with new eyes. 

Or maybe clearer eyes. I often know when a piece of writing isn't working, but finding a way to fix it is more difficult. I was partially aware that my first novel had some problems. It's not a mainstream novel and my unusual style is difficult for readers to become comfortable with: too poetic, too disjointed, the main character in too many pieces at the beginning to connect with. For years, I have been unable to find a way to approach this without losing how I saw the novel. 

I spent a lot of time last week pondering this. I did some simpler editing based around the problem of using a first-person narrative, too many I's, the sentence structure too similar, but the bigger issues continued to haunt me. How to make the beginning of the novel more approachable, but not lose my poetic sense of the novel?

I'm not sure if it's going to fix the problem, but I've decided to give it a go. I'm taking a person from the main character's past who is referred to in flashback scenes and bringing him forward and building a foundation from which the main character can fall into her disjointed state. I'll try to reduce the scenes from what is now the beginning, so that they are shorter and hopefully by embedding them in the foundation it will feel less of a jump for the reader. 

It will involve writing a substantial new chunk for the beginning and doing a lot of rewriting to make everything mesh. 

I'm not totally chucking my original. It might still find a home at one of the other publishers where it languishes in a slush pile. And I might hate the rewrite, so will want to go back to the original or start again from there. 

When the feedback is negative, it's not necessary to immediately jump to rewriting. Sometimes you have to valiantly cling onto your novel or poem with all your might until you find the right magazine or publisher. But if there's a niggling feeling that they might be right, it's worth exploring other options. Or if the same feedback comes back time and time again, you might need to admit it's a problem that needs to be fixed. 

Sit back and let the readers' comments and criticism sink in. Some questions to ask yourself. 

Is there a basis for their comments? Can they back it up with examples?

How will it improve the piece: help the readers' understanding, improve the saleability, etc?

How much does it change the original concept?

Is it a fix-it from the reader?

How dramatic and time-consuming is the change?

How do you feel about changing this?

I've mentioned 'fix-its' before when I was writing about criticism from writers' groups. It is when a reader suggests how you should 'fix' a problem your piece of writing. I am wary of these because the reader makes it personal, fixing the story to their needs. Sometimes the suggestion is good, but I prefer when the criticism is more about what they feel doesn't work, rather than how to fix it. I want to figure out my own way, do it in my style. Point out my story needs more suspense or hooks, don't suggest I should have my character get pregnant or have her mother abuse her. These are real life suggestions I've received for my current novel. Comments from readers can sometimes be very blunt. 

I've been sitting on this finished novel for ten years with the feeling that it wasn't quite right and that it wouldn't find a market as is. I'm at the stage where I'm happy to consider playing around with other ideas. 

In the end, it's your story or poem, you have to be proud to send it out, to see it with your name on it. 

Well, back to the rewriting. Best of luck. 

Rejection

Part of the waiting is over. One editor has come back to me with a negative response for my novel. Actually two this week, but I really wasn't expecting anything from the first.

I'm usually not bothered, I get lots of rejections. For my poems, my novel, but I allowed myself to hope a bit with this one. I researched the company and really liked the sound of their editing procedure. The editor was really nice and personable in her emails and requested to see the first 50 pages, then the whole thing very quickly. It seemed all positive.

The rejection, though half-expected because I'm not 100% sure of my fiction, hit me hard at first. I was literally numb for a few minutes looking at the email.

Her comments were brief, but to the point. One problem she mentioned can be fixed with some work. A few of the others I've known in the back of my mind since completing the novel, but I'm not sure how to rework it, rewrite it to fix them. Some surprised me. I can't tell how far she really read, it seems like maybe only the first 50 pages from her email. Maybe it improves after that point. It might be a matter of rejigging things to move some of the scenes around, but it might require a whole rewrite. It could mean changing my idea behind the novel.

It might be the fatal flaw and need changing, I can't decide right now. And I won't. For now, I'm fixing the fixable and scribbling notes of what I could do to approach the other bigger problems.

Rejection this big is heart-breaking, but it doesn't signal the end. There might be an editor who can see what I see, it's still at a few other places. I might find a way to rework it without losing my original vision. I have scrapped 30,000 words of this novel and started from scratch before. It didn't stop me from writing then, it won't now.

I will give myself time to recover, I will continue on with this novel and with my second. With my poetry. With writing. 

Writing Groups - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

I've been attending writing groups since I was in University doing my first degree, so for around 25 years. For me they are a necessary tool of creative writing. No matter how much time I spend writing on my own, editing and refining a piece, I need feedback to really see if it works. 

Writing in isolation can blind you to obvious mistakes. I read my pieces out loud and this helps point out a lot of weak areas, but speaking to others about my characters, my intentions and my process helps me know when a poem is ready to fly out on its own and when a chapter fits into my greater scheme of a novel. 

But finding a group that works for me is always a game of trial and lots of error. When I was in University or in a big city in Scotland I was spoiled for choice. If one group didn't work out, I could always hunt around and find another. I've done the gambit of different groups, in pubs, libraries, community centres, through courses with total beginners and experienced writers. I've had great experiences and total failures, but they haven't put me off trying to find a new one when I need it. 

Each group has their own strengths and weaknesses. Some can lean too heavily towards one genre: fiction, sci-fi, poetry and if you don't share that interest, it won't be a right fit for you. Nothing worse than being the only poet in a group full of fiction writers who insist they don't understand poetry and have nothing to say about it. Some focus on group critiques, lots of sharing of work and giving feedback. Others prefer a more practical approach with prompts and writing exercises, discussions on craft, guest speakers. If you can find a group that combines these two, you're doing well. 

But there's also the atmosphere of the group to consider, built-up by the main participants, the loudest voices. I've been to groups where they never wanted to hurt the writer's feelings, so there it was less critique and more of a love fest. Anything that suggested the piece wasn't perfect was immediately smothered with flowers and candy. This doesn't help the writer improve their work. 

Other groups can be too negative, too full of 'fix-its' as a past fiction mentor of mine used to say, the readers totally rewriting the piece in their image. The writer then lacks confidence in their abilities and doesn't trust their own gut. You need to be able to speak up in defence of the lines of poetry you love, the characters who you understand more than anyone and not be shouted down. You need willing ears as well as vocal critics. 

A group should be able to maintain a balance of positive reinforcement on what is going right in the piece and neutral critical feedback about what isn't. Neutral in the sense of not telling the writer that something is wrong, but that you as a reader are not getting the impact of that section, mood, character, line. The critic shouldn't tell them how to fix it, unless the writer asks, and shouldn't insist that it is wrong or needs to be changed. It's hard to do as we have opinions we want to share, but they need to be aware of the writer's needs, not to have their writing which is often very close to the bone torn apart, but understood as a fluid thing that is still developing with a lot of the writer's hopes and ambitions attached. 

The writer should always have the chance to explain their intention, answer any questions and ask their own or if they prefer just accept the feedback and go home to ponder it. 

Finding a writing groups in Finland has been much more difficult as I'm much more limited in my choices. The language barrier is the biggest issue, writers here work in Finnish or Swedish and I just couldn't keep up. And poetry is hard enough to understand in your native language, I wouldn't get in-depth feedback unless their English was pretty impeccable. 

I did try and start my own English language writing group, twice. But as my main pool of writers were immigrants who were not permanent to the country, both groups fizzled out when the members moved on. I also disliked being the only leader, I felt I couldn't bring my own work too often. I prefer to be a participant. 

My mentor from earlier in the year recommended a private online poetry group which I was quite keen on. I've never been in an online group that wasn't connected to a course or in a group just made up of poets. I had high hopes. I've been starving for connection with poets, reading others work and sharing mine with people who can understand. 

I've found that sharing work online is too loose. There's no deadlines, no show up at a certain time and give feedback, so people dip in as they please, comment on what they want. They have the good policy that you had to respond to two other poems before you could post your own, so I jumped in commenting on new posts and eventually adding my own poems. 

I know I'm the new guy but I felt my work was just not considered. The site has this annoying function where you can see how many people view a post and how many comment and the discrepancy between the two is frustrating, especially in the summer when you think no one's commenting because they're not around and you then see that they are looking at your post, just deciding for whatever reason not to comment. I just haven't felt part of the community yet, but I plough on. I may just need more time to find my fit. 

I've also started last week attending the local university's writing group organised by the English Department's students. They say that they have that nice mix of submitting work and more practical sessions that I mentioned earlier. There is also seems to be a good mix of fiction, screen and poetry (I'm told, I haven't heard any yet) writers. I'm a lot older than most of the writers, but it's nice to part of a real life group again. to discuss writing in a passionate way. I've really missed it. 

So test the waters of your local group. If that one doesn't fit, try another. It's a great way to build your confidence, get personalised help with your writing and to make friends with the same interests. And if you're interested in publishing it can be a good way to get info and build contacts. 

Writing groups take the writer out of their lonely attic and gives them a community. Do give it a try. 

Silence - After Mentoring

My mentoring session has ended and I have returned to regular writing life, on my own. I had gotten used to having someone to talk to about writing, to getting feedback on my poems and suggestions about where to submit and what opportunities to take advantage of. 

I've joined an online poetry group but it has faded into silence as well. People have busy lives and things will get busier as summer nears, but it's frustrating to comment on other submitted poems but to have yours receive views but no comments. 

I'm not writing as much as before. I've got two poems on a slow boil and submitted some poems to a few magazines this last week, but often I just open my writing folder and just tinker with a line or two and then go do something else.

It doesn't help that the weather is beautiful so I'm trying to get some work in the garden and my allotment, that I have fallen behind on my housework while the mentoring was going on, so need to give that a bit of attention. I also need to keep some form of social life ticking over before everyone leaves Helsinki for holidays. It's hard to fit writing into all of that and this is the last week of school here, so soon I will have to fit it in between entertaining the kids and our own holidays. 

Overall the mentoring was very helpful, the criticism on my poems was exactly what I needed to gain new insight on how my writing had progressed since coming to Finland. I have been able to edit my older poems and take a stronger focus on new ones. 

I was a bit disappointed at the end with the feedback on my collection overall. The point of the extended mentoring for me was to examine my proposed poetry collection. I asked when I first began submitting sections that as well as feedback on the individual poems I wanted suggestions on how it worked as a group and on its flow. When I asked these questions again in our last discussion session she seemed surprised by my questions. 

I left our conversation feeling less sure of my collection and uncertain how to approach any editing. Though this might just be my response to the lack of support now. I look at the collection and don't know what to do with it, whether to reorder it, leave it as is and trying submitting it to publishers anyway. If I reorder it into chapters or sections I'm not sure if it's too themey and exactly how to group them. It is vaguely grouped with similar poems together, but sometimes I dip in and out of a theme as it felt too chunky to have them all together. I don't want to waste my chance with publishers by sending out a less than 'as good as I can get it' collection. I don't know which way to jump. 

It might be as with my novels when I finish them that I have to set them aside and let them mature in my brain before I can really consider a final edit and submitting them. I hope so. Besides making rough notes on possible sections I've not looked at the book as a whole since my session finished, just tinkered with some final edits. It might be best to leave it until after the summer and look at it with refreshed eyes. But I've been waiting so long to finish it and send it out, I feel I shouldn't waste more time. 

So I'm sitting in my kitchen working, sending them out into the void of submissions, writing to a silent audience, waiting for responses. 

It might be a good time to switch back to fiction for a bit. 

Taking the Hits - Criticism

My mentoring session with WoMentoring started this week and though I knew what to expect it was always going to be an emotional journey.

The basic idea of mentoring is you work with a more established writer for a short period; getting advice on how to move your writing career forward, receiving feedback on your work and assistance in whatever areas you are struggling with. It is usually very individualised to your needs.

A big part of my requirements for my mentor was critical feedback on my writing. I have been in Finland for 7 years now and I've fallen away from the old writing groups, courses, literary circles I used to rely on to gauge responses to my writing. I still submit pieces to publishers so their yes or no responses are a rough guide, but not helpful in any real sense. 

I've submitted my work to group criticism almost from the beginning of my career. While at Uni pursuing my English degree, I joined a writing group and attended any workshops that visiting writers were offering. In Scotland, I took advantage of similar experiences: the great Scottish poet Tom Leonard ripped my poems apart back in 1992 and I still look back on it with a weird sense of pride. 

I know what to expect and how to handle it, but like I said, I'm out of practice so that first reading of my mentor's comments on my poems felt like a kick to the stomach. I did send an email afterwards explaining some missed references, but then I just left the poems alone. On paper at least, I was rolling them around in my head constantly. I was gutted, I always wish for gushing praises, but I know that's not what I really want or need. I need someone to look critically at my work and point out the weak lines, the problematic areas, the chaotic jumble of ideas in need of a focus. 

I did a free writing in a cafe while waiting for my son that evening and I did rant a bit about how she couldn't see this or understand that, but after an hour my conclusion was she couldn't see my references or understand my images because they weren’t clear enough. My writing was at fault. 

Criticism is personal, it is the critic's opinion and they are flawed and human, just like us. The critic brings their own style, interests and experiences into a poem and this colours how they respond to it and how they criticise it. And even a writer as good as Tom Leonard may have a bad opinion of a poem that does work for other people. Just because they suggest a change, it doesn't mean you have to follow those recommendations to the letter. Though Tom was right on the money with my work, I was a young, naive writer who had received nothing but praise from my University lecturers over the years and I needed to see where my work was failing. It was a brilliant wake up call, if very scary. 

Over the years I have learned to take in criticism and use it to re-examine my poems. I don't automatically change everything they point out, don't rip away all the lines they don't like or rewrite as they see fit. If I did, I wouldn't have much of the poem that was mine and I wouldn't be following my own writing instinct.

So yesterday, I re-examined my mentor's comments and went back to the poems. There were lines I agreed were forced, so they went, to some extent. Sometimes I kept part of a line as it had something needed saying, just in a different way. There were lines that were just filler, so they went. 

Two of the three poems she critiqued went back to bare bones and I'm still trying to figure out which way to go with them. I need to recapture the original spark that caused me to write them which can be difficult years after the fact. The other poem I kept most of what she didn't like because there was a major reference that wasn't clear, so I'm rebuilding, focusing on that metaphor.

Finding someone who provides good criticism of your work is hard. I tend to avoid family and good friends. They usually don't have the knowledge to respond to poetry in a helpful manner, don't want to hurt my feelings, think that praise is helpful. I go with writers whose work I admire and whose opinions I trust, writers I know who won't let their egos or professional jealousy colour their view. Writers I've worked with for years.

Praise is good when it’s deserved and specific, so you can see what is working. General praise of the ‘it’s nice, I like it’ variety doesn’t help you improve. Vague critical comments are equally unhelpful. You need to know what lines aren’t beautiful, which aren’t getting their point across, aren’t carrying their weight. Fix-its needed to be given sparingly, don’t tell a writer how to fix their poem. Point out what isn’t working for you and let them find a solution, in their voice and style, if they feel it's needed.

When I had my first collection accepted I paid a poet I knew well to review it. Her comments and criticisms pushed me in the right direction to make the collection the best I could. Positive critical feedback helps you grow as a poet, negative feedback can stunt your growth.

Writing groups are not always the best atmosphere for improvement. I have been to some where all they wanted was praise. Any comment that was critical was automatically shouted down with more praise. No one walked out wanting to improve their work. I’ve been to others where the comments were so negative and full of ‘fix-it my way’ type feedback that everyone left hating their work, they could only see the negatives. Finding a group that offers a good balance is difficult and I’ve been very lucky to work with facilitators who know how to create a good group atmosphere and with fellow writers who know how to provide helpful feedback.  

Accepting criticism of your work and using it to re-evaluate your writing is a necessary and important step to moving into the more public realm of writing and being published. Learning to deal with the fear and exposure can help strengthen your voice, so it's worth building up that slightly toughened skin. But don't be afraid to stick up for your writing, sometimes you are the expert of your own work. 

Good luck