When I was in seventh grade, we started disecting things in biology. As I look back I think it’s because my biology teacher was a boy. He also made us do a bug collection for one of our quarterly projects. Icky. My friend and I didn’t want to dissect frogs, so I met her at her house that morning, and we skipped biology. The great thing about this was her mother was there and wrote us a note to get back into school. It said something along the lines of:
“Please excuse the girls from first period this morning. They’re whimps and didn’t want to dissect frogs.”
The school secretaries thought it was outrageously funny and accepted the note.
We weren’t allowed to skip the fetal pig dissection, though. ~_~
There are two lessons to be learned here:
- Sometimes the truth is your best friend, regardless of how cruel it is.
- Dissection sucks, and you can’t avoid it forever, but the sooner you get it over with, the sooner you can move on with life.
And yes, I’ve stopped talking about biology at this point and moved on to writing. Critiques. Whenever I get a critique from anyone, it doesn’t matter who you are or how much I respect your opinion, my first reaction is “What? Are you high?” Follow-up reactions range from “It’s not a spectacular story, it’s full of flaws.” to “Yeah, I know I need to fix that, why did you have to point it out?” to “But I did say that. You just weren’t paying attention.”
I assume that almost all writers are the same way. Except there are a handful who never have that first reaction. I don’t know any personally, though. This is why I’ve learned that I should never read critiques for the first time in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep. And that I should never respond to a critique when I first read it.
I have to let it simmer. Twelve to twenty-four hours is good. That’s enough time for me to let the comments stew in the back of my head until my subconscious decides if they’re valid or not.
This time, they’re valid. At least 75%. And I knew it was coming. My initial reaction was a combination of all of the above. So to that one reviewer who I won’t call out today but you probably know who you are since really no one else has touched the piece with a critical eye yet – it probably still won’t have enough description when all is said and done, but you were right and my only excuse is ‘it was a first draft and I knew it needed work’. Which is followed by the mental – not spoken – ‘and I wouldn’t have known how to fix it if you hadn’t offered your opinion.’
How do you feel about your alpha/beta/advanced readers?
We never had to dissect frogs but have done the fetal pig one twice. Well, the second was in college and we had to also try to figure out the cause of death since it was a forensic biology lab. Not quite as interesting as the human cadavers in the pre-med program but I get there use. Though, now some schools can do lab work on the computer.
I haven’t had any readers check over my work yet, not since leaving the critique group last year. Most of the members I really liked and understood the critiques even though they tended more towards copy editing types than overarching problems. They were only getting one chapter or less per week, so that affected things. The one I didn’t like had some good poins but the execution of them sometimes were a little rude. I believe there is a way to give constructive criticism without being mean about it.
One thing is for sure: you can’t please everybody. But if 4 readers point out at the same problem, you’ve got a problem. If it’s only one or two, might be that specific reader’s perception.
My mistake was to give to one beta, edit, give the new version to another, etc. I ended up losing track of my original vision. From now on, I’ll send the very same version to a small group of beta, and edit only the things that all point out as problems.
@Dawn – I know how you feel. I’ve been through several (okay, 3 or 4) critique groups and there’s always that one person who confuses harsh honesty with helpful critique. For the two groups I’m in now, that person left the one of them, and in the other that person won’t review my work (two separate people). I think I’m better off that way ^_^
@Barb – you’re very right. When I first get comments back, I have to resist instinct to act on them right away unless it’s something I wanted to fix anyway and didn’t know how. Otherwise, it’s best to listen to a small number of trusted opinions first before tearing it all apart.