To critique or not to critique: Kristine Kathryn Rusch

It's an excellent article and a must read for any aspiring professional. Key point to remember--she's giving advice for a professional writer who wants to make a career in writing. If you're wanting to publish once a year in a literary mag, then her advice is probably not for you.

wasn't quite what I thought it was but it was good and short, to the point.

wasn't quite what I thought it was but it was good and short, to the point.

Don't stop reading at the intro. There is good stuff down the page. This is a real "wow" moment for me... Like when reading an economics book for the first time or Mark Sisson on diet and fat... Very nice.

She's got a really interesting perspective, although I'm not sure I'd agree with all of it. There certainly needs to be more business knowledge in workshops, especially for people who want to make a career out of this. But I think in-depth critiques have a place too. Hearing something like, "I stopped reading at X because the beginning didn't grab me" is helpful, but if your beginnings never seem to grab people, then it would be even more helpful to explore what exactly is going on there.

I have to agree with Lin. I respect Rusch and think she has great information to impart and a great work ethic, but I think beginners especially need to know why their work didn't grab the reader. Just saying I stopped reading on the first page would leave me very frustrated as a writer. I would never have made it very far without real nuts and bolts mechanical critiques.

I have to agree with Lin. I respect Rusch and think she has great information to impart and a great work ethic, but I think beginners especially need to know why their work didn't grab the reader. Just saying I stopped reading on the first page would leave me very frustrated as a writer. I would never have made it very far without real nuts and bolts mechanical critiques.

It's not just her. As you probably know her husband Dean Wesley Smith says the same. They both do a lot better without crits. I know most of my stories that have done better were low on crits--and revisions. I think my Q3 story will be an exception but we shall see. But there weren't a lot of crits for that one compared to pervious WotF stories. But I'm one of those writers who need a couple.

Dean has said that he used to belong to a writers group that critiques stories. He would take the critiques of one story and use them to do better on the next one. But eventually he stopped doing even that.

But different writers have different needs and in either case don't get hooked up in a critique spiral or a habit of doing waaay too many revisions.