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But lately I'm beginning to find that I Should be the one behind the wheel

Wow, the second time in one day this most be a world record.

Or I am pissed, one or the other, and well lots be honest, I am pissed.

How to say this without giving too much away? How about I hate the stereotypical unpublished writer.

I have never had any delusional thoughts of grandeur about my work, I am completely aware of the stretch it will take to get me to some point of publishing (yes there are writers that have been published that I think are worse than me but I expect better of myself). I have never claimed that my story is going to be the next hot thing and I have spent an incredible amount of time reading agency and publisher blogs about the worst and most common mistakes that new authors make.

I like to laugh and think that anyone that has half a brain really couldn't be that bad. Like who sends a query letter talking about who they want to play them in the movie rendition of their boring biography? Who really does that? I guess people must, or there wouldn't be so many strained pleas against this sort of behavior.

Critique Circle has quite possibly been the best thing that has happened to me in writing. I have met some wondrous people, people that have been published, people with literary degrees that have had the patience to look at my work.

I always assumed my stuff was bad, I had no gauge because not many have ever read it that weren't the standard "I love everything you do!" fair of folk. I had a feeling I knew where my weaknesses were but that was all blown away when I actually began to receive critiques. I mean this only in the best way.

I was right about my weaknesses, but there was so much more i didn't see because I had been staring at it for so long and even more that I had been completely blind to. It's so easy to not see these things, of course I see them everywhere now.

Even if my technical ability were absolutely flawless I would still go to critique circle. Fresh eyes are the best thing that any manuscript can have and the more the better. It's so easy to create story fragments while editing and rewriting.

Then you meet people that have completed their manuscript and the only person that has ever read it is a close friend or relative. I suggest Critique Circle to every writer I meet, and thusly have recruited many and we happily crit back and forth and everything is merry. It's such a fantastic service for evolving story lines and friendly advice, the critting service and tools are amazing. It makes it so easy to crit inline without disrupting the entire manuscript, I absolutely refuse to crit anything outside of CC anymore just because it is such a pain.

Anyways loving tirade aside, I always recommend CC and well I did so to another new author the other day. Their response was something along the lines of not needing 'amateur critiques'. They did say they were planning on hiring a professional editor, ok that I can understand that, that's not the part that gets me.

The part that gets me is that said person feels that they are above all the wonders of CC, that they, and their unpublished self shant dare grace the CC crowd with their presence. The part that might also bother me as well is that in a way that they implied they are better than me because I do choose to use the service, even though we are all sitting the unpublished boat.

Now they did say they didn't have time to crit other people's work just post their stuff, essentially they just want to progress their own needs, screw everyone else. I guess this bugs me as well since I did read part of this persons manuscript and there never was an offer to return the favor.

You can see I am getting less vague on the details, probably because I am now realizing that this person that I thought was a literary buddy will likely never read this, since they are far too busy being important.

This is a rant I suppose, an angry rant and to what ends I am hoping to achieve I am unsure. I just had to get it out of me.

Critting other people's work is just as valuable as editing your own, if not more. You can't write without being a reader (Well you can, but you probably wouldn't be that good) and there really is nothing comparable to critiquing someone else's work as it trains your eye to look for issues. I could keep going on about how useful CC is to any budding writer, but I won't.

I have a new quest.

I will get published and I will do it before this person.


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