Friday, October 5, 2007

A jury of your peers

I love love love my class. This week is my week to submit a portion of my novel for the other students to read and critique. I love that fact that I get the opportunity to possibly be helpful to other writers and I love even more that they get to look over my work.

I like having my writing ripped apart. Sounds weird, I'm sure. It's true though. I want that cut-throat honesty. I want to have my errors pointed out to me, my words questioned and my theme/characters/plots dissected. I want that. I love that.

No offense to any of you (most of you that read this are my friends and family), but on average, I can't get that from my loved ones. A few of you are exceptions, but most of you would sugar-coat things, and I can't stand that. Put it this way: If I look fat in the dress, you had better tell me and point out that my lipstick is smeared as well. I want to know I have a dryer sheet stuck to my butt or that some of my lunch has magically traveled onto my ear! Nice and tact are good sometimes, but not on something like this. I want brutal.

So far (and I haven't checked since early today, so my number may have changed) 3 people in my class have critiqued my booth (the writing I submitted). Each one of them have offered a very useful bit of information and questions that I will consider. Will I change all of what they recommended? Heck no. Will I at least consider what they're saying and change the portions I agree with and question why other things were said? Yes. Will I correct my grammatical/spelling errors? Oh yeah. This is good. Judge and jury but I'll be my own executioner. 8)

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