The Value of Critique Groups Redux: Norman Ledgin and the Sedulous Writers Group

Last week my critique group lost a member, Norman Ledgin. Ninety-year-old Norm had been ailing for months and had not been able to join us in person. But until just days before his death, he faithfully printed out our submissions, marked them up in his bold black pen, and returned them with his corrections and suggestions.

On Sunday evening, we received a note from his daughter that her father had taken a turn for the worse and was in hospice care. “Emails and phone calls are no longer an option for Dad,” she wrote. At that, we lost contact with our friend, though his daughter kept us posted through his days in hospice.

Early Tuesday morning, we received word. “My dad passed away peacefully this morning.”

We will have no more diatribes from Norm on the importance of proper punctuation, including the Oxford comma and appropriate hyphenation. We will not hear Norm’s pleas that our characters show more gumption and/or more tenderness. We will no longer be the first to read his pungent prose, depicting the New Jersey of his childhood in the 1930s.

But we were lucky to have Norm with us for as long as we did. And we already miss him. I first worked with Norm when I was a beta reader for an early draft of his novel, Sally of Monticello: Founding Mother. That was in about 2010. I have valued his feedback on my work since that time also.

Norm’s death caused me to review my earlier posts about critique groups. I was amazed to discover that I had never written a post specifically about the Sedulous Writers Group, of which Norm and I were both members. I posted in late 2012 about the writing groups I was a part of then, but that was before we established SWG. SWG began in the summer of 2013, with Norm as one of the founding members. We started as the Summer Writers Group, but continued after summer ended, and so dubbed ourselves the Sedulous Writers Group, though each of us is more or less sedulous, as the spirit moves us.

SWG has provided me with as much friendship and support as any group of colleagues I have ever had, and I have been part of some excellent peer groups in my professional career. With each departure from SWG, due to jobs and moves and death, our group dynamic changes a little. And with each addition, we scooch (Norm would approve of the word “scooch”) over a little to make room for new thoughts, new ideas, new ways of approaching the written word.

We are tough on each other. We mark up submissions ruthlessly. We advocate for plot changes. We are brutal in telling each other what doesn’t work. And in praising what does work. We each have a different style of critiquing, but by combining the input from the seven—now, sadly, six—of us, we receive pretty well-rounded feedback to take back to our editing desks.

As for Norm’s role, for six years now we have referred all points of grammar to him. So many times, we asked each other, “What does Norm say?” Now, without Norm, we will have to do what he always advised: “Buy a print dictionary. And use it.”

And that admonishment ended Norm’s obituary.

Writers, which of your critique partners has had a huge impact on your writing? Have you thanked them?