Sunday, October 19, 2014

My First Critique Partner: An International Partnership

In September 2012, I was looking for a critique partner for a fantasy book I'd been writing on and off for about a year. I met Ritu Lalit on a writing site called Agent Query Connect. Two things surprised me about her. One, she was published (a dream for a novice like me, because, hey, she's experienced! She'd be able to tell me if my writing sucks or not!). Two, she was Indian. I admittedly wasn't sure how that was going to work out. My first fear was that she didn't write in English, that we would exchange chapters and I'd be sitting there scratching my head over the Hindi.

But we exchanged chapters and to my surprise--and relief!--her writing was in English, albeit UK English. The spelling was slightly different (for example, I wrote "behavior" while she wrote "behaviour"). But it worked out. I quickly realized she was a Harry Potter fan by the Harry Potter references in the first chapter. That was great, because I was a fan too.

In the first chapter, I was fascinated by the names. I never hear those names in the US: Roma, Samaira, Sandeep, Parineeta, etc. I became fascinated by Ritu's culture--the food (whose names I'd never heard before and had no idea what it looked like), people's names, the setting, and the spiritual elements. Her story was about witches and warlocks who employed their chakras--energy centers--to use the different elements such as earth, wind, fire, and water. Her story was a fantasy thriller, one of my favorite genres! Her story was fast-paced and full of cheeky humor, and so enjoyable that I would read through her chapters quickly.

At first, I felt a little lost but after a few chapters, I began to get used to the different names and terms she used. And she began to get used to my story. I'm part of the Bible Belt, and here everything is about the Bible--crosses everywhere, Jesus on billboards, different church denominations on every street--so naturally I was writing a story about angels. A rebellious angel that somehow managed to push God's buttons. Ritu actually knew a bit about the Christian religion, so she wasn't confused by the concepts of God, heaven, and angels. In fact, she even asked me if angels were asexual and why I was making them male and female. I explained that they were in human form, and she was cool with that. She knew enough about Christianity that she was able to help me develop my angel characters, and that amazed me.

As we got deeper into each other's stories, I was surprised how much we could talk about. So far away from each other, and from such different cultures, I didn't think we'd hit it off like we did. But I was wrong! We joked about my Facebook profile picture (which was a butterfly and we kidded about me being a butterfly passing as human). We talked about the weather where we lived (I still don't know how she can live with eight months of summer!), the holidays we celebrated (I could barely pronounce the names of most of her holidays), and stories we liked and disliked.

I'm a Grammar Nazi and couldn't stop myself from pointing out every single typo in her work. Luckily, she liked me doing that. I was also big on the setting. I would ask her how something tasted or smelled, what the characters were wearing, what color the sky was, etc.

She was more focused on the bigger content issues and talked to me about my characters' motivations, the action scenes, and the pacing. She always said I wrote great action scenes, which made me giddy with happiness. She was always supportive of my writing and could boost my confidence when I was having an "everything I write sucks" day. One thing I learned while being critique partners with her was to be careful to use the term "Native Americans" in my story. In the US, most everyone thinks of the Native Americans as Indians (thanks to Columbus' five-hundred-year-old mistake). So I had to be careful to call them Native Americans; otherwise, Ritu might think I was talking about people in India. I used to have trouble with that, but thanks to her, I always call them Native Americans now.

A big thing that surprised me about her story was her strong female protagonists (and antagonists). I viewed India as an extremely patriarchal society from the news I heard. So when I read her characters, my first thought was "Hey, these women aren't whiny and weak! And men respect them! What's the deal?" (I later found out that Ritu was a feminist like myself. Something else we had in common!)

About a few months after we met, I began to run out of steam on my book and decided to set it aside for a while. But I kept reading Ritu's, wanting to know how the story ended. Then our partnership ended for about a month before she contacted me again, kindly asking me if I could do a final read through of her book before she sent it to her publisher. I went gung ho on the grammar and spelling and fired off comments left and right about where I had questions about characters' motivations, setting details, and any areas where I was confused about what was going on. She said she really appreciated my inputs.

After that, our communication stopped for a while. Then, months later, I was trying to form an online critique group in the fall of 2013 and asked her if she'd like to join. Aside from us, there was an American missionary living in Africa, a person in Sweden, and a person in France.The missionary messaged me soon after we started the group and told me she had some trouble understanding the terms Ritu used in her book. I told her she'd get used to it after a few chapters. I could read Ritu's work without any trouble now, understanding most of the terms used. However, that group came to an end due to people's schedules. But it was interesting while it lasted.

Now, me and Ritu keep up with each other on Facebook. I can barely believe that we've already known each other for two years! She was the first critique partner I ever had, and it was a fantastic experience for us both!