I'm up. My turn. And I'm pretty nervous. I've met with this group several times and really like everyone in it. The pieces we workshopped last time were quite amazing. Now, I'm not sure what I should submit. I feel like I should use something fairly new. I do have a recently finished story, but I'm not sure it's ready to show people. I have another newer story that is very polished in my mind, but I really don't want that story torn apart. How do you decide what to workshop?
1/ You have a new story that's not ready to show people. You have a newer story that's very polished in your mind...which implies it's not on paper yet. Why would the newer story, if it's not yet written, be more ready to show people? 2/ My feeling is that you should be treating them as Beta-readers; give them your best shot at a publishable work. At least get rid of the SPaG. That way, they can focus on style, characterization, plausibility, originality, without being distracted by rookie errors that you really do know better than. So, why do you want to use something new?
I would submit the one I liked the most. If it is torn apart, so be it, take the critique and see if it really does need changing.
When he said it's polished in his mind, I think he meant that to his best ability, the story is polished (edited). That said, @deadrats, I agree with Shadowfax. What good is a writer's group if you're not getting suggestions on your best work? How can you expect to improve if you're not willing to get feedback on your best work?
I'm somewhat disagreeing with the other opinions: If you're not ready for something to be torn apart, don't submit it. It's sufficiently nervousmaking to have an in-person critique of your work; don't add the burden of presenting something important to you. In that case, you'll likely be over-focused on emotional control and have trouble actually absorbing the critique. If I were you, I would get the newer less important (sorry, I missed which one was newer) piece as SPaG-perfect as you possibly can and go with that, this first time. Yes, you're not making the most of the critique opportunity (because you're presenting a story that you haven't exhaustively edited yourself) but I think that the emotional factors are a higher priority this time.
Both stories are written. For me to think of something as polished, I'm pretty happy with it. My writing is pretty clean in general so those SPAG issues aren't really a problem. I think anyone in a writers group probably wants to use newer stuff. This is how I'm writing right now. How I wrote a year ago even is quite different. I think a writers group is very different from a beta reader. In a writers group, discussions take form and things are explored. A beta reader is just one person's opinion.
Thanks for the thoughts, everyone. Between the time I posted this and sent my story out I put a lot more work into it. The truth is I don't really know which story is better or if either of them are any good at all. I don't expect anyone in my group to hold back what they're thinking at all. I just hope I can be cool about it. These things hardly ever go the way I think they will.
