Maegan's Musings

So today I was a bit apprehensive. I’d submitted a story for critiquing to my writing group (Critters.com—if you’re a writer and you want to improve and get feedback, these guys are great. I think I’ve grown my writing more in my two years writing and critiquing for them than I did during college). Usually I run my stories past friends first (because they’re nice to me), but the problem with that is just that—they’re my friends, they’re not just going to rip me a new one because they’re too nice (and also, I can withhold brownies). The people at Critters are polite, but pretty much supremely objective. They’re there to tell me why my writing sucks (or doesn’t) and how to fix it (or not).

So I opened my e-mail and saw two critiques. Cool, this could hurt my ego. Fun thing for a friday (but truth is you need to develop a tough hide as a writer, you’re a commodity in an already swamped market and if you don’t get better you don’t get published). I was pretty stoked when both of them said “I like your story a lot” (and then proceeded to tell me how to make it better, but that’s expected and pretty cool). So far, three for three liked the idea and most of the execution. It gives me hope because before it’s pretty much been 50/50 “I like it” and “do you know how many times this has been done before, and also, learn how to use hyphens.”

So hopefully I’m approaching the day some editor will throw a bag of money at my head and run off with one of my stories.  And hopefully I’ll never get another “this just isn’t original for us” rejection (to be fair, they were right, so very, very right).