Ready to take your writing to the next level? e-mail me
Writers everywhere hear the sage advice to grow “thick skin.” If you can’t abide rejection, others tearing apart your work or hearing that your baby is ugly, find another occupation. Yet as you grow into your writing life, it’s also important to learn when to take feedback to heart and when to kick it to […]
Writers are often told to grow a “thick” skin” so they can survive the truckloads of rejection, critique or poor reviews that fall on many writers’ heads. Nobody likes feeling rejected, whether by an agent, editor or reader. Yet writers often secretly suffer every time someone makes a less than flattering statement about their writing. Writing […]
As writers, we all want to learn. We’re all looking to better our skills, to reach that next level, to conquer the challenge in front of us. This past week, I spoke with a writer who’d received critiques that had, as the critiquer promised, “ripped out [the writer’s] heart and stomped on it.” What did the […]
Yesterday we talked about what to look for in a group. Today, let’s focus on what a *Good* critique is like.Writing Tip for Today: How can a writer know the crits received are good, as in helpful and constructive? The critique is specific. Remember your seventh grade book report? The teacher wouldn’t tolerate a general, […]
Writers who are looking forward to publication can’t afford to worry about the reviews. Once you’ve read your first batch of reviews, however, you anticipate the critics. Most authors will face negative assessments at one point or another. How can you stay positive when the critics write negative reviews?Writing Tip for Today: The first time […]
Over the weekend I assisted a friend in a critique session for writers at Oregon Christian Writers one day conference in Eugene, Oregon. The session was only an hour long, so the critiques were brief and based upon snippets of larger works. Although there was some very effective prose, the participants were mainly there to […]
Yesterday we discussed critique groups that stray across the line into criticism. Critique is meant to help improve a writer’s skill. Criticism gets personal or judgmental.The problem seems to stem from the inability for most of us to separate ourselves from our work. We are our words, but the reader mostly sees the words, not […]
What are your critique group pet peeves? Have you ever been hurt by a writer’s feedback? One of my most promising students attends a regular critique group. She often comments about how this zealous group of writers attacks something she wrote or otherwise rips her to shreds. She’s very professional about it, but I always […]
Are you familiar with the adage about critiques for writers that goes, “Take what you can use and lose the rest?” Sounds so simple, yet we often agonize over suggestions. Which ones will improve our manuscript? Which ones might be disastrous? Which don’t add much but the critiquer insists it’s the only way? Ever feel […]