(no subject)

I read this rather interesting post by gehayi and it got me thinking. It sounded pretty damn strange to me that constructive criticism is on it's way out, how are we supposed to learn? You tell the person the problem and you help them overcome it, good grief, I'd hate to think what my handwriting would have been like if my primary school teachers hadn't told me it was dreadful and given me extra classes to help!

No one likes criticism, of course not, but we need it. When I was writing chapter five of Nocturnale, I wasn't very happy with it, and told chetwynd_hayes to be as critical as he could with it. He read it, and promptly told me to write it again, outlining what needed to be changed. Needless to say, while I still wasn't entirely happy with the end result, it was a damn sight better than what I'd written. We all want to think our work is brilliant- I like praise as much as the next person with a draconic ego- but we should be willing to accept criticism about it in order to make it brilliant.

The idea "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all," is all well and good, but since when did constructive criticism become something nasty? I hate it when I get it, but what I hate is the flaws in my writing, not the critique itself. Flames and personal attacks are a different ballgame altogether. My poetry class used to read our work to each other, and while the teacher encouraged us to pick holes at the person's writing as well as citing it's good points, anyone directly insulting the author would be sent out. To make a direct example: One of the guys in the class was gay, and he wrote a poem about his sexual identity. One person pointed out that the rhyme was a bit off, I said I thought a certain part was a bit too jarring, someone else said the title might not be suitable, the teacher agreed and elaborated on the ideas, but I know that if someone had come up and said "OMG yr a FAG!" The teacher would have exploded (so would the class, they were a bunch of the nicest people I've met in a long time).

So yeah, long live the Betas.

(no subject)

I read this rather interesting post by gehayi and it got me thinking. It sounded pretty damn strange to me that constructive criticism is on it's way out, how are we supposed to learn? You tell the person the problem and you help them overcome it, good grief, I'd hate to think what my handwriting would have been like if my primary school teachers hadn't told me it was dreadful and given me extra classes to help!

No one likes criticism, of course not, but we need it. When I was writing chapter five of Nocturnale, I wasn't very happy with it, and told chetwynd_hayes to be as critical as he could with it. He read it, and promptly told me to write it again, outlining what needed to be changed. Needless to say, while I still wasn't entirely happy with the end result, it was a damn sight better than what I'd written. We all want to think our work is brilliant- I like praise as much as the next person with a draconic ego- but we should be willing to accept criticism about it in order to make it brilliant.

The idea "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all," is all well and good, but since when did constructive criticism become something nasty? I hate it when I get it, but what I hate is the flaws in my writing, not the critique itself. Flames and personal attacks are a different ballgame altogether. My poetry class used to read our work to each other, and while the teacher encouraged us to pick holes at the person's writing as well as citing it's good points, anyone directly insulting the author would be sent out. To make a direct example: One of the guys in the class was gay, and he wrote a poem about his sexual identity. One person pointed out that the rhyme was a bit off, I said I thought a certain part was a bit too jarring, someone else said the title might not be suitable, the teacher agreed and elaborated on the ideas, but I know that if someone had come up and said "OMG yr a FAG!" The teacher would have exploded (so would the class, they were a bunch of the nicest people I've met in a long time).

So yeah, long live the Betas.