Wow! Isn’t it amazing the passion this subject generates. Thanks, Barbara, for the courage to address it. I recently had a bad experience and for the zillionth time, learned my lesson.

My thought, as a tech writer: if you want your critique to be effective (so that equipment and/or lives are saved), wouldn’t it be better not to numb the mind of the other writer? It’s like overdoing warnings and cautions in user materials: you want to warn them of the hazards, the consequences, and how to avoid them, but if you give them too much text the message can easily get lost. Maybe the lawyers will be happy, but the users are ill-served.

As for the acceptance of non-fiction vs fiction critiques, for me all my writing is self-expression, at some level. Even if I’m writing up information that is supplied to me, the way it’s written is still an expression of how I chose to render the information as text — my “creative” solution to a particular problem of communication, my way of telling “the story”. If it doesn’t get across, it doesn’t work. Same thing for fiction, I think. Even for poetry. If it’s just something that you alone like or understand, well, that’s a kind of onanism, isn’t it?

I’ll never forget the older lady who, in critiqueing a poem of mine, saw the woman driving down her street and admiring a huge tree. In fact, the woman was suicidal and heading for the the tree.

Many workshopping groups like to rewrite your story as they want to see it. These you consider and if it doesn’t suit your plot, scrap. Others are nitpicky about what they’ve learned in writing classes and taken as written in stone, i.e., action in the opening page, conflict, immediate plot, etc. They’re used to writing what they’ve been reading and mimicking that style as the sacred rule. These too, you forget about.

So my suggestion is to get involved with either a good group or just a few friends that enjoy reading, some preferably wise about the ways of writing, and this will serve the purpose of general audience appeal as well as professional input.

The goal of criticism should be to make the work stronger, not to weaken the artist. Strong writing communicates. Weak writing draws attention to itself. The two main weaknesses I want to avoid is writing does not make sense, so that the reader consciously wonders what I am trying to say, or writing that pushes the reader toward an emotional reaction (tells) rather than elicits a real, honest emotion (shows). If my writing contains one of those weaknesses, I want to know about it.

To return to the theater remark, a director is constantly critiquing her actors—telling them when a tone of voice, a gesture, a look, is untrue to the character or misrepresents the intention of the story. I think because the act of writing is solitary, we are removed from the kind of critique that is an inherent component of creating performance art. But we do ourselves—and our readers—a favor by learning to accept and give thoughtful criticism. We make the work stronger and the experience of the work more enjoyable.

Then too, who is qualified to criticize? From what I’ve seen the people who give the impression they know the most about writing, and think they know the most, often know practically nothing. Or the critic might be looking for something completely different from what I want to write. I suppose if you want to sell an sf story it might help you to go to a workshop where the very editors who are buying are teaching the style they want. If all you want is to make a sale and never mind expressing yourself in your own way.

I have taken criticism, however, from editors, after an article or story or book has been sold. That sort of criticism I can handle because the editor has already said that he or she likes the writing by buying it and is only aiming to make it better. And an editor is certainly qualified to criticize, particularly one who has the good taste to like my work!

I’ve learned a lot from that kind of criticism.

As for the other critiques — aside from my other misgivings, I would, as you say, be confused. Everyone has their own way of doing things.

Remember, I never sold a story, even as a co-author, until I was in my forties. Decades of rejection can make one overly sensitive. However, even after decades, even soldiering on without the benefit of critiques, it is possible to finally sell something. There’s nothing wrong with wrestling with your writing by yourself.