Cluck, cluck, cluck. Another Dennys' Chick!

And we're baaaack. At the scene of the crime--Denny's--to meet another one of my awesome critique partners. By the way, I discovered that I loved inserting little blue edits in Kathy's post. So....I'm going to continue the tradition with Sandy's post! Okay, Sandy Chick, take it away....

I’m Sandy Levin, the oldest Denny’s Chick (Note from Barrie: but still very very cute) and the last to join this wacky bunch of writers. I’ve been writing most of my adult life, but I focused on romantic suspense about ten years ago. Since then, I’ve completed four manuscripts but remain unpublished. I’ve started a number of other novels in different genres and tried my hand at non-fiction, but my muse has gone into hiding. Denny’s Chicks have been very supportive of me in my dry spell. This past year I’ve been plagued with a series a health problems, so my writing has been limited to blogging at Peaceful Heart Stained Glass. When I’m not blogging, I’m teaching yoga and creating stained glass. I find that practicing yoga and meditating while creating beautiful stained glass works of art keep me stress free.

I love being a part of this group. While we are all friends, we are all professional when it comes to writing and critiquing. Here’s a sneak peak into how we operate.

How Kathy's handwriting looks. For real!

A few days before our designated face-to-face meeting, we email our pages to critique. Sometimes it’s as little as a page, but most times it’s a chapter or two. It’s important to set enough time aside to review everyone’s work, so we do email in advance if we have a large number of pages or a deadline looming. Some of us like to have comments sent via email, so we can compare notes to our current version. Some of us write comments on printed copies (what better thing to do at your son’s water polo practice or daughter’s play practice, although some of us have neater chicken scratch than others :-) (Note from Barrie: Kathy is BY FAR the messiest. No doubt she was a doctor in a past life.) We always print on the back side of used printer paper (Denny’s Chicks love to recycle). The first one to arrive finds the quietest booth in the restaurant. After ordering our skinny breakfasts, we take a few minutes to chat about our families, (Translation from Barrie: we gossip) then it’s down to business.

We try to divide our time so that everyone gets verbal feedback. The nice thing about our group is that each of us seems to notice something different when we critique. Barrie is the GMC (goals, motivation, & conflict) queen. If the scene doesn’t have it, Barrie’s on our case. (in a supportive, saint-like way) Having been a newsletter editor in my pre-novel writing days, I tend to notice incomplete or disjointed sentences, odd spellings, multiple uses of the same word. Kathy picks up on continuity and can always suggest how to make a passage funny. Kelly seems to notice everything else.

So as we review our work, we not only point out what we think are flaws and make suggestions on how to improve it, but also comment on what we liked about the work. If we don’t all bring pages, we might spend some time plotting ideas for our next chapter or discussing GMC. Our meeting normally lasts about two hours.



After filling our stomachs and reviewing our pages, it’s back to the computer . Writing is not the easiest profession in the world, but it is very satisfying. (Tres, tres true!)






Sandy, Sandy, Sandy! You didn't say that you're a stained glass artist EXTRAORDINAIRE!

And that, dear bloggy friends, is Dennys' Chick Sandy Levin. Isn't she just too adorable?