WHAT'S IN A CRITIQUE?
Well, it's been quite a while since I posted. I've been so busy with projects that I keep saying I'll post in the evening and never seem to get to it.
I have stories in upcoming anthologies in 2008: Chicken Soup for the Soul: Celebrating People Making a Difference in the Lives of Others (Measuring Miracles in Leaps and Bounds); There is Life Over Fifty (If You Believe You Can Achieve); Writer's Bloc (Miracles Happen on Horseback); and a few that can't be mentioned yet.
The thing that's on my mind today is critiques. And, that doesn't necessarily apply only to writing. By the way, that's my British grandson Tex crying and he isn't even old enough to get a critique yet, unless it's about his ability to hit "high C". He just turned one year old last month.
Anyway, unless you're told that what you've done is the greatest thing since sliced bread, critiques can be helpful,upsetting,and sometimes cruel. Two factors apply...the person offering it and your attitude. We have a rule in my writer's group, Henderson Writer's Group - Las Vegas area - that is simple...NO BLOOD ON THE FLOOR! That means to be constructive but not mean when offering criticism of someone else's work. The object is to help improve it, not slam it.
I learned a long time ago to keep an open mind. If you don't want to know what's wrong, don't ask. Sometimes the other person's opinion is way off base, but once offered it'a yours to accept or deny.
In a former life, I was an interior designer specializing in model home projects. When I first chose that specialty, my partner and I would walk through the work of other designers and believe me, very often we were brutal. "Ugh. Look at that. Where did she get her degree...in a crap game?" or "Whatever possessed that designer to use something like that?" Of course, those designers never heard what we had to say. They were busy spending the design fee they earned for the homes, and we were just breaking into the field.
Then we learned the BIG LESSON. We learned to quit knocking it down before we did a little analysis. Sure something might not have been our particular taste, but why did the designer choose it? Why did the developer give it a stamp of approval? Why did the new homebuyer love it enough to buy the home? Once we opened up, we learned instead of trying to always be right instead of taking time to analyze what we were looking at.
When someone critiques your work, that's what you have to do...stay open. If it doesn't ring well, ask yourself if and why the person is qualified to offer the opinion. If the answer is positive, think about why they said that. And, if it isn't, you might also think about why they said it.
I think that is the best advice that I give new writers...and when I was designing, new designers. OPEN UP AND LISTEN. Then exercise your choice to accept or not accept. If you don't accept, make sure the reason wasn't because it hurt your feelings, or you wanted to be right. Life isn't always the way you want it to be, but in certain areas, you do have choices. You definitely need to recognize bad advice. One agent told us our Silver Sisters were too silly and over the top. That is just sort of summing up the actual laundry list of things the agent suggested we change.
The qualifer there was that the agent took a long time to answer us and A CORPSE IN THE SOUP was already in print by the time we received the letter and had garnered many favorable reviews. Every review pointed to exactly the things the agent pointed out. Comments from readers were also about those things. The difference was, everyone commented because they loved the wisecracking sisters, the over the top names and the backfiring schemes that unfolded until the killer was discovered.
Enough pontificating for today. I'll be back blogging in between writing several short stories, working on a new novel I'm writing with a former colleague, finishing the second Silver Sister's novel (SEVEN DEADLY SAMOVARS)and editing my mother's memoirs. The good news is that Phyllice and I are almost through with the first draft of SAMOVARS. We are targeting having it ready for publication in early 2008. Oh yeah. i'm also still editing a book that I wrote nine years ago. Not to worry. That edit's been going for for over a year now. Maybe some day I'll finish it.
MORGAN ST. JAMES
www.silversistersmysteries.com
www.morganstjames-author.com
(this is the new website I'm building. Check it out. Besides writing, I collect pigs and I'm slowly but surely posting a gallery of my "piggery". I have over 200 pigs with personality, from ceramic to stuffed, to wood, silver, onyx, etc., and the collection keeps growing.
I have stories in upcoming anthologies in 2008: Chicken Soup for the Soul: Celebrating People Making a Difference in the Lives of Others (Measuring Miracles in Leaps and Bounds); There is Life Over Fifty (If You Believe You Can Achieve); Writer's Bloc (Miracles Happen on Horseback); and a few that can't be mentioned yet.
The thing that's on my mind today is critiques. And, that doesn't necessarily apply only to writing. By the way, that's my British grandson Tex crying and he isn't even old enough to get a critique yet, unless it's about his ability to hit "high C". He just turned one year old last month.
Anyway, unless you're told that what you've done is the greatest thing since sliced bread, critiques can be helpful,upsetting,and sometimes cruel. Two factors apply...the person offering it and your attitude. We have a rule in my writer's group, Henderson Writer's Group - Las Vegas area - that is simple...NO BLOOD ON THE FLOOR! That means to be constructive but not mean when offering criticism of someone else's work. The object is to help improve it, not slam it.
I learned a long time ago to keep an open mind. If you don't want to know what's wrong, don't ask. Sometimes the other person's opinion is way off base, but once offered it'a yours to accept or deny.
In a former life, I was an interior designer specializing in model home projects. When I first chose that specialty, my partner and I would walk through the work of other designers and believe me, very often we were brutal. "Ugh. Look at that. Where did she get her degree...in a crap game?" or "Whatever possessed that designer to use something like that?" Of course, those designers never heard what we had to say. They were busy spending the design fee they earned for the homes, and we were just breaking into the field.
Then we learned the BIG LESSON. We learned to quit knocking it down before we did a little analysis. Sure something might not have been our particular taste, but why did the designer choose it? Why did the developer give it a stamp of approval? Why did the new homebuyer love it enough to buy the home? Once we opened up, we learned instead of trying to always be right instead of taking time to analyze what we were looking at.
When someone critiques your work, that's what you have to do...stay open. If it doesn't ring well, ask yourself if and why the person is qualified to offer the opinion. If the answer is positive, think about why they said that. And, if it isn't, you might also think about why they said it.
I think that is the best advice that I give new writers...and when I was designing, new designers. OPEN UP AND LISTEN. Then exercise your choice to accept or not accept. If you don't accept, make sure the reason wasn't because it hurt your feelings, or you wanted to be right. Life isn't always the way you want it to be, but in certain areas, you do have choices. You definitely need to recognize bad advice. One agent told us our Silver Sisters were too silly and over the top. That is just sort of summing up the actual laundry list of things the agent suggested we change.
The qualifer there was that the agent took a long time to answer us and A CORPSE IN THE SOUP was already in print by the time we received the letter and had garnered many favorable reviews. Every review pointed to exactly the things the agent pointed out. Comments from readers were also about those things. The difference was, everyone commented because they loved the wisecracking sisters, the over the top names and the backfiring schemes that unfolded until the killer was discovered.
Enough pontificating for today. I'll be back blogging in between writing several short stories, working on a new novel I'm writing with a former colleague, finishing the second Silver Sister's novel (SEVEN DEADLY SAMOVARS)and editing my mother's memoirs. The good news is that Phyllice and I are almost through with the first draft of SAMOVARS. We are targeting having it ready for publication in early 2008. Oh yeah. i'm also still editing a book that I wrote nine years ago. Not to worry. That edit's been going for for over a year now. Maybe some day I'll finish it.
MORGAN ST. JAMES
www.silversistersmysteries.com
www.morganstjames-author.com
(this is the new website I'm building. Check it out. Besides writing, I collect pigs and I'm slowly but surely posting a gallery of my "piggery". I have over 200 pigs with personality, from ceramic to stuffed, to wood, silver, onyx, etc., and the collection keeps growing.