What follows, in three parts, is a letter sent to me when I was very down about the reviews my work was receiving and my writing in general. I printed it and now refer to it frequently. Jana, the author, has given me permission to share it with all of you.

What I do want to give you (and like a critique - please ignore what I say if you wish) is my impression on the whole review thing. Not just here [Del Rey online workshop] - but everywhere. And a little methodology of encouragement.

See, reviews are not meant to be taken personally, but many people do. These people want to hit back, and so write bad reviews. You have to learn to ignore these people. What they say doesn't matter.

The reviews that matter, and the ones you want to foster, are those from people who know what they are talking about, can give encouragement as well as criticism, and maybe are a little higher on the mountain than you are in terms of writing.

(I had a critiquer last year tell me that writing is a mountain, and that everyone starts in a different place at the bottom – it is a good analogy.)

What I mean is, go through the names of people on the workshop – read their reviews of other people’s work, read their profile…see what makes them tick. People who are the ones you want to critique are those that will give you a detailed critique and still make you feel good. They WANT to get published, and WANT to help others so that they in turn will help them (talk about bad sentence structure LOL). People who have experienced workshops in the flesh (clarion being the best of the workshops because it emphasizes critiquing and writing).

Critique their work, and if they critique yours in return, send them a nice thank you email mentioning the positive aspects and how you will utilize them (in brief). Build a relationship with them.

So – ignore the dumb critiques, take the good ones, and use what you will, and smile when you get the odd good review. that is all you can do.

Other than that don’t worry so much. These workshops are very up and down. There are so many people on there, and many of them don’t care really, post their worst stuff, have no idea how to critique, and think a “that is good” is a review.

Just because you don’t get fours and fives [D.R. uses an optional 5 point scoring system] doesn’t mean you aren’t worthy of them. What it means is that there are a lot of readers on there, most of them still very new, and they might not like the genre, the main character, the color of hair, etc. and so just are set against it from the beginning. remember that, and take it for what it is worth. If a person lambastes you without reasonable thought, then their review is one to chuck. if they lambaste you while giving you reasonable explanations, well that is better, and maybe they just need to work on their tact. Or sometimes it looks like lambasting because they didn’t bother to mention all the things they LIKED about your story, thinking you know them already.

So, there are my thoughts on critiquing, and hopefully you will get something out of it.

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