Thank you dear, Meg for inspiring me. As you can tell I haven’t been blowing away the pages with my blog.
But then out of the blue, you gave me a reminder of the joy, the pain, the necessity of writing: And, a not-too-intimate-to-writing place to start: critiquing.
If you’re workshopping, taking courses, classes, you will need to critique others’ works, a time-consuming, sometimes painful, yet valuable thing to do.
This blog will just be about basic management and the next entry will go deeper into different ways to critique.
If you don’t have much time, here are some ways to squeeze in your critiques and your writing, too.
1,Pace yourself. If you have four manuscripts to do, and you meet next week, then do a first read of two a day, then a second read of one a day.
2.Make a date with your classmate’s work. Schedule a time and a limit. Maybe after a quick lunch you can give one manuscript 15 or 20 minutes.
3,Do remember that “fixing” a piece of work is the author’s job. If something bothers you, pulls you out of the piece, do your best to say what and why, but don’t rewrite sentences or explain your solution. If you don’t have a what or why during the first read through, just mark the spot to come back to later.
4.Have a check list of what to look for. (More about this later.)
Since critiquing and creating often get in each others’ way, write at a separate time than you critique.
You’ve heard, write first thing in the morning. But, hey, write anytime.
Gina Oschner wrote a few words at a time of sense impressions, ideas which she later turned into the fabulous short stories in People I Wanted to be.
Don’t beat yourself up if you aren’t doing everything perfectly. I know this is hard for writers to understand. Critique reasonably. Reasonably, not perfectly. Be present when you are critiquing.
Be present when you have an idea or thought. Write it down if and when you can. Writing 3 sense impressions down out of the thousand or million you have each day is better than none. I take pictures of sense impressions that I notice. Robert Olen Butler says something like, “Pay attention to the moment to moment sensations.”
Please add your suggestions on how you manage time around work or school, or life and critiquing and writing.
Much joy and creative flow to you!
This site is to encourage and support writers and other artists and to express myself.
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