How I Found My Critique Group, by Jeanette Bradley

I read Elizabeth Gilbert’s BIG MAGIC when it was a new release in fall of 2015. I connected with her mystical concept of creativity - that ideas exist outside of ourselves, and we just act as doorways for them to enter the world. That is often how the creative process feels. I also loved Gilbert’s vision for a sustainable, happy, creative life, focused on the work itself rather than external rewards or criticism.
 
Inspired by the book, I set out to notice the creative nudges of Big Magic in my own life.  At the time, I had been participating in several online critique groups, but I was feeling a need for a deeper critique of both words and images.  I felt I needed not just any group, but a group of people who were all at about the same point in their writing/illustrating journey as I was.  I wrote down “find or create a critique group” as a to-do item in my journal.
 
One day I saw a post on a national illustration group from someone who was re-entering illustration after a few years away, and who looking for a critique group.  I realized I had met her in a class, and that she lived near me. I sent her an email. I sent an email to another former classmate who I sometimes swapped critiques with.
 
Suddenly, there were three of us. We were a critique group!  We met a few times, and we all started to create more work than we had been.  We all tried out new techniques and ideas. I felt that each time we met, my work got better. 
 
One day I woke up with the thought: “Doesn’t that school fundraising sale happen around this time of year?” I looked it up, and the sale was that day. I dropped my kid off at preschool and drove 45 minutes out of my way with this burning sense of urgency that I needed to be at the sale when the doors opened.  I waited in a line that stretched around the block, wondering why I was there. I hate shopping, why was I in this crowd of intense shoppers?
 
Once inside the school gym, I picked up a pair of kid’s rain boots and a couple of dresses, but I really didn’t see anything that would have compelled this feeling of needing to be in that particular place.  Then I bumped into someone straightening the racks - a parent volunteer who turned out to be another illustrator I had taken classes with. She was looking for a critique group… and suddenly I knew why I was there.
 
Over the last couple of years, our group has produced a lot of new work. Two of us have debut books coming out in 2018.  One has a book on submission, and is selling a line of greeting cards. Another won a prestigious award and has started showing her fine art.  All of that external success, though, grew out of each of us having a commitment to our own creative practice, and to supporting each other’s creative lives.
 
I have an agent and an editor that I feel incredibly lucky to be working with.  I think Big Magic played a role in connecting me with just the right people for my book to shine, although the story of how I met them is not nearly as dramatic. (I queried.)

​​I leave you with my doodle musings on external success vs. maintaining a creative practice.  Work is its own reward, and so is connecting with other creatives. 

 
LOVE, MAMA written and illustrated by Jeanette Bradley
Coming January 2, 2018 from Roaring Brook Press. 
Available for preorder on IndieBound and wherever books are sold