Critiques

I think critique partners and groups are invaluable. They are where much of our growth as writers occurs. I have one critique partner who’s been in two groups with me, and the one we’re in now is just getting started. I have to say, I am so relieved to have a group again. I feel adrift without those extra eyes and brains looking at my work.

The thing that floors me is the horror stories I hear about critiques that shatter friendships or nip them in the bud. I guess there are people out there who write nasty critiques, but I have to say, I’ve never run into one. I haven’t even run into any nasty contest judges. I have certainly had people write some pretty strong criticism of my work, but I don’t equate that with nasty. I asked them for a critique because I was looking for criticism. I entered contests, in part, in hopes that an editor or agent would see my work, but also so that someone could find the stuff that would get me rejected BEFORE I submitted to someone where the rejection really counted. Call me crazy.

I’ve mentioned before, I coached speech for fifteen years (and I’ll be doing it again next year). I approach critiquing the same way I approach teaching and coaching. Yes, part of the job is to encourage, but far more of the job is prepare kids for a highly competitive world. In speech, I prepared them for speech tournaments, where the competition is as fierce as it is in sports. In English class, I’m prepping them for college. When it comes to the field of publishing, honey, it doesn’t get any more competitive. If all I do is make students or critique partners FEEL good, I’ve failed. If I fail, they fail. I don’t make up a bunch of horse feathers about how great every little thing they do is. When I offer approval, it’s 100% for real.

Because this is how I work, I am highly suspicious of anyone who reads my work and says nothing but good things about it. To me, this translates as, “You are such a god-awful writer that I can’t even begin to tell you how to fix this. If I were to even scratch the surface of how dreadful this is, you would never write another word.”

I don’t even do that sandwich thing. You know, two nice things to act as the bread for every criticism. That runs the risk of forcing people to make up things to sandwich the “meat” of the critique. I say what I think. So far, thankfully, I haven’t read anything I thought was awful. (Well, if you exclude certain student papers. I generally don’t do F’s; I go for do-overs. There’s almost always the germ of a good idea in there, somewhere.) If I like something, I say so, and yes, I try to be as aware of what I like as I am of what I think needs change. That’s what I hope my critique partners will do for me.

When I submitted INTO HIS ARMS to Kristin, she filled that sucker with yellow stickies, and the majority of them requested changes. I suppose I could have gotten in a snit. What I felt, genuinely felt, was thrilled that she thought my work was worth taking the time to write all those stickies. If I had gotten in a snit, I wouldn’t have Kristin as an agent, and I probably wouldn’t be published.

I usually end up making most of the changes my critique partners suggest. A lot of the time, they are pointing out things I know aren’t working, and I appreciate their fresh perspective on the problem. At my agent’s suggestion, I went to another of her clients for a critique when I was between groups. She had some serious criticism, but trust me, I knew there were problems with the work. She gave some terrific advice and probably saved the book. I had a ton of back-story that I really needed, and I was painfully aware of just how poorly I had executed it.

I guess it all comes down to this: You don’t have to be perfect to be good. Heck, you don’t have to be perfect to be published. You do have to assume that you are not perfect and that, from time to time, others can see your work more clearly than you do. There are things about my published books that still bug me. In fact, a number of my writing friends and I agree that, as an author goes through the steps of publication, copy edits and galley proofs, she becomes increasingly more convinced that she’s a hack. (I edited that one sentence three times, by the way.) I think it’s inevitable.

When my students wrote their last essays, they kept complaining about how hard it was. I told them, “If any of you thought that this was easy, you didn’t do it right.” If an author believes that she has written a book that requires no revision, she needs a reality check. Let me tell you, it made me nervous as heck that my editor didn’t ask for more changes in my three books. My chief comfort was in the critiques I had received before submitting those books to him.

The long and the short of this little diatribe: I can’t speak for all critiques. I can say that if someone gets a critique from me, I really mean all of the nice things I say. Of course, it’s a given that I’m right on target with those. The rest? It’s one person’s opinion. Take it or leave it, but a writer does herself a real disservice when she refuses to truly open herself to constructive criticism.