Critique

I spent last Sunday with the critique group I belong to. At our meetings, we each read – if we’re ready – a chapter or sample of our current project. After we read, the other writers critique. Gently. We have a tendency to say things like, "Have you considered…" or "Maybe you could think about…" Even the most negative of comments are prefaced by a compliment of some sort.

We never get nasty.

With this group, that’s easy to do. There’s always something good to say about everything that’s read. That’s not always the case. In the past, I’ve been in groups where the writing was bad and personalities clashed. It could be brutal.

Once, I submitted a couple of sample chapters of a novel to an editor at a major publishing house. I’d been advised to mail the chapters off and given the editor’s name by an agent at a writing workshop I attended. With that support, I expected a positive response, or at least a friendly one.

Instead, the editor told me my ear for dialogue was abysmal and that he could hardly finish reading the first page of the manuscript. It’s taken me a long time to get over those comments, even though I’ve published about ten books since that editor passed his judgments.

I enjoy the critique group I’m in now, though I can’t always make the meetings or stay very long when I do. These men and women have often given me what I needed in terms of encouragement when the going got tough. Now they let me know how much they care just be being there for me.

And, of course, there’s Sylvia’s Irish soda bread. She gave me three more loaves, already sliced, still warm from the oven. I’ve started buying exotic preserves to go with her home-baked bread. Peach and blackberry and pure apple. It’s wonderful.

It’s funny how little it can take to make me happy these days. Or how little it can take to make me miserable.

The critique group and my friends and Sylvia’s soda bread remind me of what’s important.