Have you ever been on an Internet writing forum? My experience is similar to a Samurai suicide where you insert a dull blade into the lower left portion of your belly, tear up to your chest, turn right, cut across and allow your guts to spill on the floor.
Not many do it anymore because something more painful than that is available. Writer forums are the new in of painful deaths. The added plus is there is no mess to clean up. All the blood and guts are eaten while alive. So simple!
I had a review of a chapter on a place called Critic Circle. Wonderful place to bud out any masochistic tendency. And here's the bonus, you pay to have it done. How masochistic is that! Actually I've a number of chapters from the book I'm working on posted there. Not one, has gone by without some bozo reviewing it. I did meet a few people who gave good critics and we had worked together but for some reason, they took summer seriously and opted for vacations or surgery. Who else but a writer would have surgery in August.
So there I am stuck with one critic from a guy who broke down the first paragraph into musical beats, with a graph that he couldn't explain, with the words translated into beats. Gee, interesting but huh? Then he decided not to go any further. Why? Well, the dialog between two characters who are high school dropouts, heavy dope smokers, dead-end jobbers and called each other dude made him think I was one of them so no reason to critique further. Obviously I was in high school with a limited vocabulary and why should he bother finishing the critique.
It cost me three points to post the chapter. That means about three critiques I have to wade through to make three points. And I do a good job with high marks for my critiques. I go to a forum and bitch about the quality of the critiques at the site.
That opened a can of worms by a Candance. That's her name on the board. Shrew is her real name and she proceeded to call me a bully and everything else you can name Satan. Nothing about the quality of the critiques given. Not a fucking thing, apparently a bad critique at Critique Circle is a good critique. Just drool something and send it back for a point, why bother to read what someone else wrote.
It may have turned out okay, it forced me from my comfort zone and in search of someplace to hang my hat. I did and ended up at Scribophile. They have more than one, gay and lesbian group there. They have a strict policy about critiques and from what I hear from the members, they do rid the rotten apples.
But, I haven't turned over the money for membership yet. I'm still on the freebie side of things. That's what worries me, once they get the moo-la will they throw me to the clowns?
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