Value of a critique group

My agent told everyone in her agency to find and join a critique group. This can be easier said than done,  but it made sense to me, so I set out to find one. In the course of writing my book, I quickly discovered that although it can really be gratifying to have friends and family read your manuscript and gush about how wonderful your masterpiece is, it isn't really very constructive. They don't want to hurt your feelings, and having someone close to you tell you your writing isn't all it's cracked up to be can be painful in a very personal way.
   
Thus the value of finding a complete stranger and ideally a fellow writer, to read over your work and tell you what's wrong with it, as well as what works. Sure, it's still painful, but not nearly as personal. It's easier to be a little more objective about comments when you don't really know the person giving them. At the same time, they don't worry so much about hurting your feelings as they do helping you improve your writing.

I can't tell you how invaluable that is. I found an online critique group  taking new members, and over the past few months I have learned an incredible amount about the value of editing and critiquing. Evaluating others' work helps me to look at my own writing more critically. I see what works or doesn't in other stories and that helps me  search for similar issues in my own. Plus, it doesn't matter how many times you read over your own work, you will miss things. It might be typos, missing words, sentence fragments, whatever, but you will miss something. Your brain knows what is supposed to be there so it simply fills it in. Looking for these problems is another invaluable service provided by your critique partner.

I don't claim to be an expert in any of this. In fact, most of the time I feel completely lost when it comes to trying to follow the labyrinthine path towards publication. But it's nice to know I have a group of fellow writers trying to help me along!