The Art of Critiquing:

I am writing out of frustration now. At my last Greater Cleveland Writers Group I met a woman who I liked right off the bat. We discussed writing and the possibility of a critiquing group. We exchanged emails addresses and began a dialog and then over the next few days did some quick critiques of each others work.

The first critique of my first episode of my blog storyline, “Three Ordinary Lives” she wrote some really good points. I re-wrote it. The next critique had a line by line, pulled apart critique as to why it didn’t work. Wrong tense, wrong words, try a different tone here. It was depressing. So I tried again and emailed it.

Once again the critique came back line by line. Try stronger verbs here etc… I re-wrote again but I didn’t send it, because we were going to get together that night and discuss the critiquing group ideas. Later that evening at dinner I showed her my latest re-writes and we had a discussion on tenses. Again I was confused. It seemed I just couldn’t get it right. So I tried again on Saturday morning, and email it.

Sunday I was thinking about it all day. I went to my fiction books and did some research. In all the books I read, and I have a lot of them, I found the way I was writing was correct, so what’s the problem? I just couldn’t figure it out, until later Sunday evening. I have a set of books in the Elements of Fiction Writing by Writer’s Digest, called “Characters and Viewpoints.” The answer I was seeking was right there. Most fiction is written in third person past tense, which I had been writing in. However my new friend was trying to get me to write in first person present tense. After seeing this answer I completely understood the conflict we were having.

At the same time the person’s elevated status was brought down quite a bit. I was so happy to have someone who understood writing only to find that she is a grammar whiz not a writing wiz. It seemed as if she was trying to get me to write in her taste and words not mine. To me that was not critiquing correctly, so I email her to step down. To save my sanity I had to, even though it pains me to do so.

If I had stayed and held the course there would have been too much resentment and it would not have been good for either of us. A lesson learned I think.

Until next time.