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I don't often (i.e. try never) do serious writerly blog entries. I'm more of a here's this meme and the weird video I picked up on YouTube, and have a brief insight into my somewhat twisted writing mind, here's why I'm not writing because life has interfered and here is the new way one of my children chose to totally embarrass me in public yet again.
But something happened the other evening that has been playing on my mind a bit.
I'm a great believer in critiquing for others. It helps everyone and its a small way of paying it forward etc. I'm a member of a number of online groups at this stage. Some I frequent more than others, but that's mainly for the gossip! :D
So, I was doing a critique of a novella for a friend. She's a relatively new writer, works really hard and has a lot of promise (coz like I'm the big expert an' all! Yup!). She has done a fair bit of critiquing for me and has been really helpful. All was well and good. I finished critiquing her first draft (which she had warned me was fairly rough) and sent it back to her. I then pm'ed her and apologized for covering her lovely manuscript with virtual red pen and asked were we still friends (Captain paranoia strikes again). We had a good laugh over it and all was well.
A couple of night later she pm's me to essentially ask, was the novella actually awful and were you just being nice? (answer: No. I'm not nice. Ask my hubby!) She had received three critiques on it - one from her regular CP, one from me and one from someone else (two new critters). Her CP and I went through it thoroughly, did the usually and summarized what we found.
The third person tore the piece apart, line by line, leaving her with pages and pages of edits for the first chapter alone! My friend was devastated. It was all complimented by comments such as the critiquer could tell my friend was a new writer because it was all so bad, with glaring grammatical mistakes and plot holes (er, no, not really. And it was clearly stated to be a rough draft) and, my favorite, the critiquer was doing her a favour by being like this as in the publishing world, one needs to develop a thick skin.
Er... Hello? When did being mean become a criteria for critiquing?
Because that is mean.
The thick skin comes from publishers and rejections, not from someone else venting their pettiness on your work. I have encountered this before. It seems like everyone has at some point. The only real solution is to mail back a polite "thanks very much" and never open it again (preferably drop it in the trash). Sure the critiquer could have been having a bad day, but really that should have nothing to do with the story. There's this thing? Called Professionalism? I'm not doing the hand holding, group hugs "why can't we all get along", pom-pom waving cheer squad but honestly - why bother if you are going to be so negative? It doesn't help anyone.
Actually come to think of it I had a similar one with Puzzlebox but I have come to the stage of just shrugging them off now. I tend to ignore them and never ask again. Neither do I offer as I've invariably found that critiquers like this should take their own advice. Main thing to always remember is that it is your story. You're the one telling it so you get to decide what goes and what stays. No one else should tell you what to write. They can make suggestions, but you make decisions.
I got some good advice early on when learning to crit which I think stands to me (from people at sites like Notebored and Liberty Hall, a family of writers for whom I'm like the prodigal son in act one of the stage play these days!)- point out the good things as well as the bad. It's not sugar coating a crit. It's common sense really, to let someone know what IS working for you as a reader rather than just what is not. And that's the other thing. When you give a crit, it's only your opinion. Very important to you, sure, but not necessarily right. You're a reader. Not a God of Literature descending from on high to pass on your limitless divine knowledge of how the written word works.
Yes. I am a bit cross. Did you notice that?
I remember getting crits like this when I started out and to be honest they almost put me off writing altogether. You know the type of things. Little snide comments that actually have nothing to do with craft and everything to do with putting people down. "What's the point of this sentence?", "God, your protag is an idiot!", "Well its obvious that you've never experienced this yourself, isn't it?" (Yes, these are all paraphrasing a crit I got once and they are not so far from the truth. Can't tell the truth because I deleted the sucker!)
So to my friend, if she read this, as we said the other night - open a bottle of wine, chin up, carry on. To the negative one, my friend is going to prove you SO wrong. And to everyone else sorry for ranting.
What are your experiences? C'mon and share. Make us all feel better. The more bitter and twisted the better. :D
But something happened the other evening that has been playing on my mind a bit.
I'm a great believer in critiquing for others. It helps everyone and its a small way of paying it forward etc. I'm a member of a number of online groups at this stage. Some I frequent more than others, but that's mainly for the gossip! :D
So, I was doing a critique of a novella for a friend. She's a relatively new writer, works really hard and has a lot of promise (coz like I'm the big expert an' all! Yup!). She has done a fair bit of critiquing for me and has been really helpful. All was well and good. I finished critiquing her first draft (which she had warned me was fairly rough) and sent it back to her. I then pm'ed her and apologized for covering her lovely manuscript with virtual red pen and asked were we still friends (Captain paranoia strikes again). We had a good laugh over it and all was well.
A couple of night later she pm's me to essentially ask, was the novella actually awful and were you just being nice? (answer: No. I'm not nice. Ask my hubby!) She had received three critiques on it - one from her regular CP, one from me and one from someone else (two new critters). Her CP and I went through it thoroughly, did the usually and summarized what we found.
The third person tore the piece apart, line by line, leaving her with pages and pages of edits for the first chapter alone! My friend was devastated. It was all complimented by comments such as the critiquer could tell my friend was a new writer because it was all so bad, with glaring grammatical mistakes and plot holes (er, no, not really. And it was clearly stated to be a rough draft) and, my favorite, the critiquer was doing her a favour by being like this as in the publishing world, one needs to develop a thick skin.
Er... Hello? When did being mean become a criteria for critiquing?
Because that is mean.
The thick skin comes from publishers and rejections, not from someone else venting their pettiness on your work. I have encountered this before. It seems like everyone has at some point. The only real solution is to mail back a polite "thanks very much" and never open it again (preferably drop it in the trash). Sure the critiquer could have been having a bad day, but really that should have nothing to do with the story. There's this thing? Called Professionalism? I'm not doing the hand holding, group hugs "why can't we all get along", pom-pom waving cheer squad but honestly - why bother if you are going to be so negative? It doesn't help anyone.
Actually come to think of it I had a similar one with Puzzlebox but I have come to the stage of just shrugging them off now. I tend to ignore them and never ask again. Neither do I offer as I've invariably found that critiquers like this should take their own advice. Main thing to always remember is that it is your story. You're the one telling it so you get to decide what goes and what stays. No one else should tell you what to write. They can make suggestions, but you make decisions.
I got some good advice early on when learning to crit which I think stands to me (from people at sites like Notebored and Liberty Hall, a family of writers for whom I'm like the prodigal son in act one of the stage play these days!)- point out the good things as well as the bad. It's not sugar coating a crit. It's common sense really, to let someone know what IS working for you as a reader rather than just what is not. And that's the other thing. When you give a crit, it's only your opinion. Very important to you, sure, but not necessarily right. You're a reader. Not a God of Literature descending from on high to pass on your limitless divine knowledge of how the written word works.
Yes. I am a bit cross. Did you notice that?
I remember getting crits like this when I started out and to be honest they almost put me off writing altogether. You know the type of things. Little snide comments that actually have nothing to do with craft and everything to do with putting people down. "What's the point of this sentence?", "God, your protag is an idiot!", "Well its obvious that you've never experienced this yourself, isn't it?" (Yes, these are all paraphrasing a crit I got once and they are not so far from the truth. Can't tell the truth because I deleted the sucker!)
So to my friend, if she read this, as we said the other night - open a bottle of wine, chin up, carry on. To the negative one, my friend is going to prove you SO wrong. And to everyone else sorry for ranting.
What are your experiences? C'mon and share. Make us all feel better. The more bitter and twisted the better. :D
