Online Critique Group Update

ON-GOING CRITIQUE GROUPS

I am pleased to report that we have eight Online Critique Groups successfully running, covering all genres from Picture Books to Young Adult. In addition to those mentioned, two groups, a PB Writers/Illustrators Group and an Illustrators Group, are reforming and are looking for new members to boost their numbers.

POSITIVE FEEDBACK

Here are some positive comments about Critique Groups emailed to me recently.

Our Picture book group swelled to 6 members only a few months ago and it’s a good number I feel. Members are all keen and respond readily. David Cronin

We have a great variety of critique input. Great member feedback! John Tyrrell

I would like to say how much I have enjoyed being part of this critique group. I love reading everyone’s work and being able to offer my insight each week which will hopefully be useful to the writer. I love receiving the incredibly helpful and supportive feedback from others. Having many eyes on one piece of work helps with my learning and improving my work. Kaye Baillie

I agree with Kaye and it has helped my writing and has kept me accountable which means more words on the page. Ella Mulvey

I have found the group to be incredibly supportive and encouraging. Organisation of the group has been shared, a roster is maintained by Penny, but this has been flexible and adapted when members have been unable to contribute due to ill health or family commitments. Group members have offered critiques that have been constructive, highlighting both strengths and weaknesses of the shared texts and offering suggestions and comments for improvements as well as encouragement for aspects that they believe work well. My experience with my picture book critique group has been so positive that I consider access to the critique groups as a very valuable benefit of SCBWI membership and have encouraged several writers to consider joining a group. I know my own writing has improved as a result of my involvement in my group. Susan Whelan

 I think we all found the feedback and companionship useful and fun. Liz Duthrie

I am in one of the groups myself and I love the friendship, support and the wonderful suggestions and ideas I get from the other members.  Margaret Roc, Online Critique Coordinator

Online Critique Group Publishing Success

Deborah Abela work-shopped her first idea for a picture book in this group and had brilliant feedback that helped tighten and reshape the text. She is very excited that this book will be published by Random House in 2017.

So if you have been thinking that you would like to join a Critique Group but you haven’t got around to filling in the on-line form, now is the time to do so.

We would love to have new members, published and ‘keen to be published’, in all the genres to form new groups.  We would also like to supplement numbersin the following existing groups:

• JF
• YA
• PB Illustrators only
• Illustrators

Sign-up online and look forward to receiving constructive and useful critiques that will encourage and help you to re- shape and improve your art work or writing towards your publishing goal.

What to do after you receive your critique:

A critique gives you honest and direct suggestions on how you can strengthen your writing. The suggestions give you an insight into a professional’s point of view and therefore it is worth your while to take their suggestions seriously.

• take some time to think about it
• read the critique or your notes again
• think about the rationale behind the suggestions
• Ask yourself why they were made and how they would improve the work
• Discuss them with other writers
• Incorporate the suggestions into your draft and compare the before and after results
• Remember the suggestions can be about the story itself or to do with marketability
• In the final analysis it is your decision to accept or reject any suggestions offered

Margaret Roc, Critique Group Coordinator

Enter Your Book in the US Summer Reading Club

Calling all PAL members, would you like the opportunity to spread news of your books in the USA? SCBWI will publish our first ever SCBWI PAL SUMMER READING LIST released 1 May 2016.

There will be 15 Summer Reading lists, organised in the 15 Crystal Kite Regions.

These well-designed lists will be available digitally for download and we will also make hard copies to distribute.

These lists are available to schools, libraries, bookstores, parent and community groups and SCBWI will support them with a marketing and promotion campaign.

How can you submit?

Every PAL member is entitled to submit one of their books, with a 30 word summary and intended grade level, for inclusion on the list. Submit one book with the above details to readinglist@scbwi.org by April 7

The Winter Reading List will come out in November.

Members can keep the same listing or replace that book with another one of theirs.

Hurry, they need your submission by April 7.

Christina Booth Success Story

In 2014 I was fortunate enough to attend my first SCBWI conference in Sydney. That alone could be my success story!

I had postponed becoming a member of SCBWI for a long time. I live in Tasmania, you know, that small island at the bottom of the map, when it is deemed important enough to be put on the map! We didn't have a SCBWI group in Tasmania and were part of the Victorian group, so unless I was going to hop on a plane to attend an afternoon catch up, I didn't see any worth in joining. Obviously I did join,  after chatting to others who encouraged it and so found myself considering attending the next Australian conference. How could I afford it? I couldn't. So I applied for a CAL (Copyright Agency) grant to attend.

Just after everything was pretty much booked out and I had begun to make plans to send my portfolio over in my absence, I received a letter to say that my application was successful, I also found out that places in the showcase had been increased and that I could register for the conference and the extra master classes on offer, and there was room for me to have a critique as well. Success! Hooray, and a huge thanks to CAL who helped me cover the costs of attending.

For a children's author living away from the action, attending these gatherings is so important, to help revitalise what I am doing, who I am as an artist and to learn from my peers and other professionals. I was hungry and I was on my way to a banquet!

And what a banquet it was.

I missed out on being able to pitch my picture book but I was excited to be able to include it as a dummy in my portfolio. I was also nervous and excited to be able to discuss my first novel during the critique sessions:  I wanted to know if it was 'shite' or had potential, I felt I couldn't attempt another until I knew if it had a chance and I'm the sort of person that wants the truth so I couldn't go on my families reactions (they love me after all). That work is still in progress but it does, I am told, have potential, so that was good news.

I received a good response to my portfolio but I feared no one had really looked at the dummy. Next time, I will adapt the format to make it quicker to look at. Fortunately, I had an appointment with a publisher who had written a support letter for a grant I had received from Arts Tasmania and we were meeting at the conference to throw some ideas around for the project I was working on. I decided to ask her if she had looked at my portfolio during the showcase and alas, she hadn't seen the dummy so I put it in front of her there and then.

She loved it and within a month I had a contract. The project we were discussing was also successful, and she liked the proposal so much, I had a contract offered on that one as well. My first offer on a story yet to be written! Too Many Sheep will be released through Scholastic in May this year and The Anzac Tree will be released in 2017.

This could be seen as a success, I don't doubt that for a moment but to be honest, the real success is that this Taswegian can wing her way over to Sydney and rub shoulders with many wonderful and talented people. The success is that I can challenge myself to leave my little island in the south and fly to the 'Big Island' and discover that I am, within the writing world, quite normal and doing okay. That is the success of it all. Connecting, re-connecting and building bridges. Boosting morale and escaping the writers isolation, mixing with like minds, all who are hungry, no matter where they come from, and head in for the banquet together.

Since 2014, Tasmania has formed its own chapter of SCBWI. It is small in number but we are growing. Whilst most members live in the south of the state, and I am in the north, it is still difficult to attend get-togethers. But in March 2016 we held a mini-conference in northern Tasmania as a part of the Tamar Valley Writers Festival. I am keen to see numbers grow so we can have enough people in the north to create a group that meets regularly and so we can join the southern group from time to time. I can't thank Anne Morgan, Deb Abela and Susanne Gervay enough for getting a Tasmanian group set up, even though we don't meet in person very often, the connection is there and it is strong and growing. It is a huge encouragement and that is, I believe the best success story of them all.