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Seven copies of my work handed out last night, and I have to put an electronic copy up on the (extremely protected) Yahoogroup fileshare for anyone who's coming next month but didn't come this month.
SO nervous. Too late to do anything about it. I'm on the hot seat at the May meeting. *jitter*
Given that they only meet once a month, I feel extraordinarily honored to get into the action immediately. The group coordinator actually apologized to me that we wouldn't have time to critique it last night, as someone else had already submitted work in advance. (I was boggled; the website made it clear that you couldn't get more than 3 pages critiqued unless you submitted it in advance, which seemed sensible to me, but apparently it's flexible.)
We sat for two hours talking about six poems, a couple of which were quite powerful. I learned a lot from watching the author react, both how to accept critique gracefully and certain mannerisms that I want to avoid. (She mostly modeled the former, but she was understandably nervous in many of the ways that I will certainly be nervous, leading to a bit of impulsive interrupting and disclaiming.)
When it's my turn, I'll probably make one big fluttering nervous disclaimer along the lines of, "I'm pretty confident about dialogue, but I have no formal training in how to make the surrounding words fit together, so I appreciate that they'll probably all have to be chopped around," before they start in on me. Then I can sit quietly and mightily resist the urge to say things like, "Oh, that, I know that part's weak, I'll change it right away!"
And it's a month away. Maybe I'll have gotten the disclaimer out of my system by then.
My impressions of the group: very welcoming, gentle but thorough critiquing, tasty pie. The group leader is cheerfully gregarious, which is part of the welcoming atmosphere.
My only complaint on that front is that it's a little difficult to get a word in edgewise, so I think there might be better group flow if she chose to wait until others had rung in before giving her critiques. Also, when we were supposed to be carefully reading and marking poems with our shiny red pens, she kept talking even after she rebuked herself. I recognize this as something I might well do if I were running the group, and I would find it difficult to correct in myself, so I'm certainly not spiting her for it.
The group currently meets once a month, but several of us asked why it wasn't more frequent, and the answer seems to be "tradition, which can be changed given sufficient interest." So that might be nifty.
SO nervous. Too late to do anything about it. I'm on the hot seat at the May meeting. *jitter*
Given that they only meet once a month, I feel extraordinarily honored to get into the action immediately. The group coordinator actually apologized to me that we wouldn't have time to critique it last night, as someone else had already submitted work in advance. (I was boggled; the website made it clear that you couldn't get more than 3 pages critiqued unless you submitted it in advance, which seemed sensible to me, but apparently it's flexible.)
We sat for two hours talking about six poems, a couple of which were quite powerful. I learned a lot from watching the author react, both how to accept critique gracefully and certain mannerisms that I want to avoid. (She mostly modeled the former, but she was understandably nervous in many of the ways that I will certainly be nervous, leading to a bit of impulsive interrupting and disclaiming.)
When it's my turn, I'll probably make one big fluttering nervous disclaimer along the lines of, "I'm pretty confident about dialogue, but I have no formal training in how to make the surrounding words fit together, so I appreciate that they'll probably all have to be chopped around," before they start in on me. Then I can sit quietly and mightily resist the urge to say things like, "Oh, that, I know that part's weak, I'll change it right away!"
And it's a month away. Maybe I'll have gotten the disclaimer out of my system by then.
My impressions of the group: very welcoming, gentle but thorough critiquing, tasty pie. The group leader is cheerfully gregarious, which is part of the welcoming atmosphere.
My only complaint on that front is that it's a little difficult to get a word in edgewise, so I think there might be better group flow if she chose to wait until others had rung in before giving her critiques. Also, when we were supposed to be carefully reading and marking poems with our shiny red pens, she kept talking even after she rebuked herself. I recognize this as something I might well do if I were running the group, and I would find it difficult to correct in myself, so I'm certainly not spiting her for it.
The group currently meets once a month, but several of us asked why it wasn't more frequent, and the answer seems to be "tradition, which can be changed given sufficient interest." So that might be nifty.
