more cat pictures

I went to SARA last night for the first time in six months. We were voting for the new board and to pass the new bylaws, so I braved the horrible traffic (which actually wasn't too bad last night). Anyway, we didn't have a speaker, so we went around the room talking about what we wrote, what inspired us and what we'd learned in our writing.

A huge percent of them said they'd learned so much from critique. We have two groups, a lot, I think for an organization our size. I've participated, usually with just the beginning of my story, though BD has been through my smaller group almost in its entirety (that story is still kicking my butt - I need 20000 more words to make it ST!!!) Several of these ladies send their whole books through.

Then I started thinking - none of my contracted books have been to critique at all. Hot Shot and Smoke were in contests, and while I revised HS a lot because of that, Smoke is very nearly identical to the way I wrote it. Yes, HS went through revisions with editors and agents, but never went to critique. Trish read Wayback, but she's the only one. Even the cp who's also writing a Wayback hasn't seen it. Yet it got contracted.

So what's your take on critique groups?

Today: take ds to get earbuds, hopefully a haircut, clean living room, work on BD and read Trish's chapters