Join a critique group

As many of you know, I belong to the American Christian Fiction Writers organization, and a topic came up on the email discussion loop that I wanted to tell you guys about.

Sometimes, an ACFW member will email the loop asking for a quick critique, and usually people are more than willing to take a quick look at a piece of writing. One member did that last week.

In response, another member raved about his ACFW critique group, and encouraged other members to take advantage of ACFW's free critique group service.

What ACFW offers for every member is their free critique group program. A coordinator will assign a member to an online critique group. The groups are usually small, no more than 5 or 6 people, and most of them are smaller than that.

The groups are matched according to genre, if you prefer.

You can also request a group that can keep up with your writing speed--critiquing one chapter a week or one chapter a month, whichever you can keep up with.

If a group doesn't happen to work for you, you can always ask the coordinator to reassign you, no problem. So you can "test out" several groups until you find one that clicks for you.

If you belong to ACFW, I encourage you to hook up with a critique group. When I first joined ACFW, I was in several different critique groups, and my writing grew by leaps and bounds.

Writers will often find their own writing technique improving just from the act of critiquing someone else, as well as the feedback they get from their critique partners.

If you do not belong to ACFW--or perhaps you don't write for the Christian market--many other writing organizations offer the same sort of program.

Another option is to utilize Writing.com, a free website for writers of every genre to post writing, give and receive feedback, and connect with other writers via discussion boards and groups.

I found a writing partner through Writing.com--we were posting on the same discussion board and she said she was a Christian historical romance writer who needed a critique partner. I responded and we critiqued for a little while.

I've also had people read and review things I posted on Writing.com, and the feedback was usually good. (If that happens to you, you should reciprocate by reviewing something for the other person.)

So you can see there are several options for you to join a critique group or find a critique partner. I hope this has been helpful to you and that you can find other writers to share feedback with! It will help you improve your writing more than you can imagine.