FULL CIRCLE
Critique is difficult to give and receive, as Lorraine Mace is painfully aware
NOTES FROM THE MARGIN
Lorraine Mace
We writers are funny folk. As beginners we give our work to friends and family asking them to be honest, but really only wanting praise. I know when I first started out I hoped to be told how brilliant I was. I now acknowledge that this was probably not the best approach to take if I wanted to improve, but back then asking for a critique was more akin to begging for approval than looking for constructive criticism.
I still recall feeling I should give up writing for good when I joined an online writing group and received critiques from people who didn’t have a reason to spare my feelings. This is not to say they were cruel. They were simply giving me exactly what I’d said I wanted – the truth. Sadly, after being told by everyone who loved me that I was the Next Great Thing in Literature, it was a bit demoralising to discover most of what I’d written was more litter than literature.