Rob Parnell's Writing Academy Blog

Hope you had a great week. We took some time off last weekend and didn't really get back to work until yesterday (Thursday) afternoon. Being a self employed writer is handy for that. If you're getting stressed you can call time out for a few days to recover - and you don't have a boss threatening to sack you if you don't come back into work immediately! I remember those days - actually more than a decade ago now - and I really resented those bosses, in fact I still loathe the whole system that makes us work 9 to 5. To be honest I really don't understand it - but sociologists tell us our society gets what it wants and that we actually want to work 40 hours or more a week for just enough (and sometimes less) money than we need to get by. It fulfills us they say. Oh yeah? I get emails every day from people out there that say the exact opposite... Maybe all these learned sociologists should leave their university campuses an...

  Many writers swear by critique groups. They rely on them for good solid feedback from a wide variety of other writers - because it's helpful, confidential and, best of all, it's free. But many new writers join critique groups for the wrong reason. Actually, it's not so much wrong - and it's common enough - but it does hamper what you might get out of judgment by your peers. Namely, newbie writers usually only want one thing, and that is: validation. It can come as a great shock to new writers to venture out into the world - to finally summon up the courage to show their work to other writers - only to discover that they are not universally and immediately acknowledged as a genius. I have seen this phenomenon over and again. New writers come down to our own crit groups and read their material. You can tell they most times only want one response - to be told that their work is brilliant! Any other gentle criticism from group members can result in a ...