I’ve been critiquing alot this week and find that it is not always easy. Sometimes I don’t find much to offer and then other times, there are so many problems, I cannot figure out how to make it better. Usually I love the story and can see the potential it has, but I hate marking someone’s story in red.

There’s something about taking someone’s “baby” and telling them the baby needs work that makes my heart sad…and even a little fearful. Sometimes I think the baby is underdeveloped. It’s undernourished. It needs some vitamins to make it stronger. But to tell a parent that, well, it’s a frightful thing. I try to mix encouragement with the correction, but so often I fear that I have overdone it.

Don’t we want to know what is wrong with our “babies” so we can do everything in our power to help it grow? I think I do, but when I get my baby back all bleeding with red, I wonder. I sometimes feel rejected. Hopeless. I can’t be a mother to my story. Why was I thinking I can birth a story?

Then I eat some chocolate and I am alright. I fix my baby and keep praying over it, hoping with God’s grace it will fly the coop, finding a new home on someone’s bookshelf.

Do you writer’s out there have trouble critiquing other’s work? How do you balance the good and the bad?


****Winner of Lady In Waiting by Susan Meisnner is MAUREEN! Congratulations!****