The Edinburgh Creative Writer’s Club meets every Monday at Spoon Cafe on Nicholson’s Street. It’s a loose association of people organised through Meetup. Attendees have different ages, genres, interests. Each week, some five or six people read something to the grop and get feedback on the piece.
I went yesterday.
I read the piece I’m reading at Illicit Ink, got some interesting feedback, listened to other people read, gave some bland feedback, and went home.
It will take me a while to break in or get comfortable with this group, but comfort will come. My plan is to go every second week (except when it clashes with Book Quiz) and bring something to read most times. But not every time. That appears to be bad form.
It was interesting – and useful – to get feedback from people who do not read or write in your genre: they have a very different perspective and are sometimes unaware of genre conventions. The group is very kind so a level of self-criticism is needed to get to the root of the criticism. Still, I got two great compliments. One chap found a sentence scary, another said the story reminded him of Shirley Jackson. There are all kinds of way I could take that, but I’m going to take it straight-up.