Writing groups aren’t my thing. I don’t like to share work in progress. It has always felt too much like art by committee to me. But that doesn’t mean I don’t need to get unstuck. Sometimes you just have to talk it out. It’s like couple’s counseling where the two parties are you and your novel.

So once a week I meet my best author pal Eric Stone for what we call our Writers Lunch, which is sometimes dinner or breakfast, but regardless is called a Writers Lunch. We’ve been doing this for three years now. We talk plot and character and contracts and agents. We are brutally honest because anything less is useless. We frequently disagree with one another. This is the best part. The disagreements spark debate, which sparks critical thinking about whatever storyline or character is misbehaving.

And in the end, I get to go to cheesy restaurants like this one, and call it work:

After afterward, I can get one of these at The Donut Man:

By the way, because my agent, my editor and no fewer than four publicists threatened to have me killed if I didn’t do it, I now have a Facebook Fan Page. This is where I talk writing process, give inside peeks on how the current novel-in-progress is going and generally talk books and author life. Self promotion is kept to a bare minimum ’cause I hate that stuff, too. It would be awesome if you checked it out and “liked” the page. It would be more awesome if you liked it and talked back to me there.