Okay, I’ve now looked up DWTS, found out it’s on tonight, and plan to watch. I’ve also watched a couple of fuzzy You Tube videos, and I must say, Apolo is lookin’ pretty good. I’m very excited.
As to the over-the-phone critiquing that occurred last Monday, I think it went well. We’d exchanged many, many pages before that and had gotten plenty of emailed feedback, but something wasn’t quite clicking (at least for me). I couldn’t really ‘read’ some of her comments, and so I wasn’t sure how to take them. Plus, after the first chapter or so was sent, I wasn’t getting any specific good comments, or at least not many.
The latter got cleared up on the phone: she mentioned in passing that she assumed I didn’t want to bog things down with favorable comments and so had been only focusing on constructive criticism. Clearly, she doesn’t know me very well: I soooo want to bog things down. I want to know what’s working, what’s funny, what struck a chord. I want to know all that good stuff so that the not-so-good stuff isn’t so hard to take. If someone tells you that they LOVE your dialogue, but you need to really trim down the introspection (for instance), it’s the the fact that they love your dialogue that keeps you motivated. At least that’s what keeps me motivated.
So I don’t think we solved that, because I didn’t blurt all that out in the middle of her commentary, but maybe I should have. I’ll just maybe mention it in the next email. All in all, it was good. We clarified some things, and I got a feel for how she feels about my WIP. We plan on going back to email and only phoning if something comes up that can’t be dealt with in cyberspace.
But I do have a question for those of you with critique partners: when do you figure enough is enough? If your partner has read your first chapter four times already (for example), do you have them read it again after those final tweaks, assuming they’re pretty big ones, or do you just assume you’ve got it and move on? I’d love some feedback.
