I'm not sure how you got a stalker from your group--but if it was a face-to-face writers group, maybe the guy was just trying to establish a reputation as the baddest ape in the herd.
Anyway, back on subject. Yes, writers groups are helpful under certain circumstances. The biggest thing is you have to be in a group with people who know how to write for publication. Let me repeat that. You have to be in a group with people who know how to write for publication. The problem is, most writers groups are populated with well-meaning people, but few if any have the rare combination of determination, talent, and discernment to write for publication. I can think of a writer's group at my college that was headed by an English professor and populated with teenagers. I can't vouch for the group members, but the professor's work was atrocious--he was only published because he self-published. I read the first page of his novel and there were four paragraphs describing in detail the driveway in front of the main character's house. Four long paragraphs for one ribbon-like loop of packed gravel in front of an old brick-facade plantation house. With an introduction like that, one can only speculate why Warner didn't offer him a million dollar advance on his manuscript.
I have found that you stand a better chance of running across a good group online, simply because the diversity that is inherent to any group assembled on the World Wide Web. However, with the good comes the bad--the really bad--and thats where discernment comes in.
Its one thing for somebody to pick apart your work because they truly have a feel for why a certain section of dialogue doesnt flow or because youre too wordy in the descriptive narrative at the beginning of a passage and you loose the intensity and momentum you would have otherwise carried over from the previous section. Its quite another when you have somebody who is tearing apart your work because they cant stand not to, making up silly reasons to support their insistence that James should drop to his knees and pray for guidance when Molly lies to him about where she was the night before instead of storming out to his truck and driving off like a lunatic as you had originally written it.
Id say for every ten people in an online critique group, you may have one or two who give truly beneficial critiques. The others will range from the useless to the asinine.
Would I recommend an online writing group? Yes--definitely. If all ten people say somethings wrong, then odds are, somethings wrong. Besides that, its a good weather gauge for your work. You get relatively immediate feedback and you can gauge the relevance of that feedback by evaluating the others comments each member made about other writers work. If you evaluate every critique carefully, you can find something useful in just about every one. Its a growing experience. I would suggest that you use the online writing group as a sounding board for your first and subsequent drafts, but not your final draft. Once you invest the time in rewriting and editing your manuscript and youre ready for a final draft, dont let anyone steer you away from your vision. The final draft should incorporate your interpretation of all the suggestions you got along the way. The final draft is your baby, your polished gem.
One last thing about critique groups, dont post everything youve got to them. Id suggest posting the first chapter and a few follow-up chapters. Once you have received feedback on five or six chapters, you should have a general idea of what mistakes youre making and how to avoid them. The first chapter is vital to post, because thats what readers in bookstores are going to check out when they thumb through your book. If you dont hook them in those first few sentences, you can forget it. That more than anything is why I recommend writers groups--the group members are readers, by definition, and if you can hook them into reading your work, you know youve got a good chance of hooking readers anywhere and everywhere.
