At the Salinas Writers Conference last August, I won a free critique for the first three chapters of my novel, Hada, from Becky Levine, who is a free lance editor. She has a book out now that is called The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide. In an excerpt I read from her book, she compares building members for a writing group to cooking and adding spices. If you aren't careful about adding personalities into the critique recipe, you could have a spice that is too bitter or two sweet and it is hard to remove a spice already put into a dish.
The writing group I'm in had that problem not too long ago. It was a very difficult situation because the person did not have the experience in writing as we were led to believe. In the future we decided to interview a person and ask them for a writing sample. Agreement by all present members must be unanimous to include a new member.
Becky has many suggestions and as far as I know her book on critique groups is one of a kind right now. If you are interested in building a critique group or adding to one you are already in, I think her book would be worth buying.
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