Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Critiqued!

I put my Unicorn story up this morning and by mid-afternoon the critiques were rolling in. I came home and saw a sea of comments.

I’ve run a gamut of emotions.

First off, I can’t believe some of the mistakes they found. I must have read over this story a dozen times, yet there were obvious typos like ‘the’ when I meant to write ‘they’. How did I miss that?

I feel like an adolescent learning how to drive. I'm swerving from too much description of minutia to too little description of important emotions. I can't seem to find the lane.

My main character didn’t come off quite the way I had hoped and the unicorn stole the show. Ironic that in my initial planning she was little more than a prop.

I’ve dealt with some negative emotions. The critiques have shown me that I still have a long journey ahead of me. Sometimes the path ahead looks so long that I wonder if I’ll ever get there. The temptation to give in, throw my hands, and say to *bleep* with the whole idea was something I struggled with.

But I’ve also had some incredibly positive and encouraging emotions. "

“Overall, the story has great bones.” and “This story has a LOT of potential” were exciting critiques to read. I treasured comments that certain parts were “Fantastic!” and “Wonderfully done!”

The critiques loved my unicorn character. “I can't tell you how much I enjoyed reading her!”

I can write a character people love. That’s a positive step. I just need to strengthen my main character and make him as enjoyable as my unicorn.

I am grateful for the detailed critiques these people have taken the time to give me, and I’m learning from every comment. It bummed that I’m only going to get one bite at the apple at this. I’d love to see what they think of the rewrites.

This also gives me a real sense of concern over my NaNo (which has become more of  a NaNoWriYEAR). But I’ll finish that project before I start worrying about that.

2 comments:

Laurie Tom said...

One thing I often do to catch the obvious typos and badly worded phrases is to read my draft aloud to myself. It forces you to read your work slower than you would otherwise, and since you're reading each and every word so youcan speak it, you're more likely to catch the typos and related issues.

I know I've changed some sentences around after realizing they were difficult for me to speak naturally.

Unknown said...

That's a great suggestion. I will do that for the second draft. Thank you.