Interstitial Moment:

While I was driving home from my writer's group today, I thought–and not for the first time–how much I love the women in my group. They are all well-published children's book writers (though some of us also write adult books). So I decided I needed to write about the phenomenon of such critique groups.

There are basically two kinds of such groups. First, there are those groups in which each author reads pieces aloud at the meeting and it is critiqued then and there. Secondly, the group in...