When Does a Harsh Critique Become Verbal Abuse?

Readers often ask writers "where do you get your ideas?" and we sometimes find it hard to answer, because ideas are, of course, all around us at any given moment.

Critique groups can be great...or not

But I remember the exact moment when I was inspired to write Ghostwriters in the Sky. I was at a prestigious California writers conference and I'd listened to a young man read a compelling story in a late-night workshop.

The critiques that followed started out negative and got harsher as each speaker piled on. Most of them criticized him for breaking "rules" I'd never heard of. It was as if they belonged to some strange cult and everybody had read its scripture but me.

I was something of a newbie at fiction writing, but I had two Ivy League degrees and my mother taught creative writing at the university level, so it wasn't as if I was a total ignoramus on the rules of writing.

Nobody who spoke had anything to say about the young man's strong storytelling skills and fascinating characters. I raised my hand, but was not called on, apparently because I wasn't a member of the "writing rules" cult. (For more on this, I wrote a post on these "writing rules police" on my writing blog last month.)

What's worse, the bullies were egged on by the workshop leader—who seemed more interested in wielding power than in improving anybody's prose. He was obviously an empathy-challenged power-tripper who needed the whole workshop to be about him.

Being a newbie, I didn't know if what happened was a normal part of workshopping, but I felt as if I'd witnessed some pretty nasty verbal abuse. 

I tried to speak to the young writer afterward—to say how much I disagreed with what had been said—but he dismissed me with a few angry words and took off running. I realized he was close to tears. He could only see me as a member of the gang who had bullied him. 

That night I tried to write about that awful scene. In my story, the critiqued writer was so damaged by

The Santa Ynez Valley, the setting of Ghostwriters in the Sky

the bullying that he tried to kill himself. Of course my story was way too melodramatic, so I later changed it to a murder with the appearance of suicide. Then I added a few more murders (I had to kill off that workshop leader!) plus some romantic sizzle, a couple of ghosts, a crossdressing dominatrix, and a lot of laughs.

For me, the best way to deal with something that upsets me is to find a way to laugh at it. I suppose that's true of all humorists.

My final result became the first book in the Camilla Randall Mysteries series. Ghostwriters in the Sky introduces us to a thirty-something Camilla Randall a.k.a. syndicated columnist "The Manners Doctor." Camilla is caught in a downwardly mobile spiral after her nasty divorce from newsman Jonathan Kahn has caused a lot of papers to drop her column. She's also estranged from her best friend, Plantagenet Smith, and is fearful of losing her Manhattan apartment. 

An unexpected invitation to teach at a California writers conference sets off a series of events that lead to the mysterious death of a talented writer who has been savaged in a critique group run by a bullying teacher who is himself a failed writer. (He now only publishes as a ghostwriter--hence the title.)

The novel, which is set in the wine-and-cowboy country north of Santa Barbara was originally going to be published by my first UK publisher as a sequel to The Best Revenge. We thought it had a great shot at finding an audience amongst the international writing community, because at the time I was a columnist for a popular Canadian writers' magazine, and this was a story I thought most writers would relate to.

The Maverick Saloon, setting of several scenes in the book

But my publisher went belly-up and I slowly discovered that nobody in New York would go near a story about the publishing industry. "We live with this stuff every day," wrote one agent. "We don’t find it entertaining in a novel." That gave me a sense of the myopia of the industry at the time.

After a few hundred rejections, I put the book in the file of "not a snowball's chance in Hades" and wrote a couple more books. But I was sad to lose the story. It’s got some of my favorite characters and Marva, the cross-dressing dominatrix is one of my all-time favorites.

So I was thrilled when an international publisher, MWiDP (now Kotu Beach Press) offered to publish it in 2011. The editor had some great suggestions to make the convoluted plot less confusing. His suggestion to start the story in New York rather than California gave me an "ah-ha moment", and I jumped into some major revisions.

The book has proved to be popular and is part of the boxed set of Camilla mysteries that was on Amazon's humor bestseller list for most of 2013. 

I don't know what ever happened to the abused writer from the workshop. The writers' conference is still going, but under different management. I hope they reined in the guy who inspired my bully-boy leader. 

I often wonder if I could have done more for that young writer and why nobody spoke up. I suppose anybody who did got savaged, so everybody had learned to keep quiet. I must say I didn't go back to a writer's conference for some time after the experience. 

I usually recommend that new writers workshop a book in a class or a critique group. Most critique groups are helpful and very few are run by people with the mental health issues of "the Cowboy." But I do warn people to look for red flags before they settle into a a group. I've written a number of posts on my writing blog about the benefits and dangers of critique groups. One is Beware Groupthink: 10 Red Flags to Look for When Choosing a Critique Group.   Another is Why You Should Ignore the Advice from your Critique Group but they can Help you Anyway.

Have you ever witnessed a behavior in a group or workshop that seemed inappropriate or abusive? Was more than one person involved? Were you able to stop it, or was the "Groupthink" too strong? Have you ever been abused in a group or workshop? What did you do? 

GHOSTWRITERS IN THE SKY: CAMILLA MYSTERY #1

 

After her celebrity ex-husband’s ironic joke about her "kinky sex habits" is misquoted in a tabloid, New York etiquette columnist Camilla Randall's life unravels in bad late night TV jokes.

Nearly broke and down to her last Hermes scarf, she accepts an invitation to a Z-list Writers Conference in the wine-and-cowboy town of Santa Ynez, California, where, unfortunately, a cross-dressing dominatrix named Marva plies her trade by impersonating Camilla.

When a ghostwriter's plot to blackmail celebrities with faked evidence leads to murder, Camilla must team up with Marva to stop the killer from striking again.

Ghostwriters in the Sky is only 99c in e-book at all the Amazons iTunes, GooglePlay  Kobo, Inktera, Scribd and NOOK.

It is available in paper at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

It is FREE at iTunes, Inktera, and Kobo

"Ghost Writers is set in a writers' conference in Santa Ynez Valley, where I've lived for twenty years.... This book is hysterically funny AND accurately depicts the Valley. Anne Allen gets it right, down to the dollar bills stuck on the ceiling of the Maverick Saloon. It was so fun to read as she called out one Valley landmark after another. Allen got the local denizens right, too, the crazy characters that roam our streets"...Sandy Nathan, award-winning author of The Bloodsong Series