Critique Day

Sooooo... Today we had a critique day, where we brought in 3 copies of our first chapter in it's most final form. We got into groups of 4 and took turns reading people's work and giving feedback.

I just got finished reading through what my peers wrote(which wasn't much), and... how do I put this? My friend, "S" gave me the best feedback. She posed questions I hadn't considered, and pointed out exact places to elaborate. The other two people's feedback wasn't quite as useful. One kept suggesting I cut out words that would have turned a lot of my sentences into fragments, but then again my criticism for her was that she overused sentence fragments. And she recommended I change the order of some parts, but I don't understand the reasoning behind some of the moves. Then the other guy is adorable, but didn't write much. Though he made a couple of good formatting suggestions.

And now I feel kind of bad because I pretty much bled ink on their paper. I didn't leave a space unmarked. And I don't know if their self-esteem is ready to see that on their work...

Especially as a teacher and having lots of practice grading, this is something I'm used to doing. And I don't think the others in my group were. But in addition to that, this class has made me really analytical of writing, and I read differently now than I used to. So I really saw today, for the first time, that I have the potential to be a book editor. My teacher even told me individually that she thought I'd make an excellent book editor. Pretty cool. It's like another career path has opened up before me that doesn't look too shabby.

My teacher was absolutely adorable and bought ALL of us a copy of one of her books and autographed them for us. Then she also wrote a pretend review blurb for our books.

I don't have my blurb with me at the moment, but it was really sweet and she said something about my book "blending sentimentality and science fiction seamlessly." I may not have the wording right but it was something like that.

I'm exhausted because I've been staying up until the wee hours of the night and then not sleeping terribly well. But I'll be home in 4 days, where I will surely catch up on sleep in my own beautiful bed. Until then, I'll be proofreading and revising papers...