It's hard to really criticize your own work. Over the past few years, I have become harder (and harsher) critic of my own work; however, I feel I am not objective enough with myself. I have a few friends I send my work to for looking over, but except for one, big bro Les, not many reply with much feedback.
When I finished my first play, I was excited and wanted to share the script with my friends, some of whom were writers, too. I emailed them all a script and waited for feedback. When nothing came back in the next few weeks, I asked them if they had received it and they told me they had, but it's harder to read the script online. So, I printed out copies (not an easy thing since the script was 90 pages long), bound them, and passed them along. How many reviews came in, you ask? Well, besides Les', none...still waiting eight months later.
Since then, I have edited the play myself a few times and I feel it's almost where I want it to be. I have also finished, and submitted to a theater, a 10-minute play that did not get reviewed by someone else before submission. I edited a few time, but due to time constraints (I found out about the call for submission a few days before the deadline) I wasn't able to send it out to friends. I want to thank my buddy Les for taking a look and critiquing it, even though it was after I submitted it.
I am wondering if people would be willing to swap work for peer editing. Is this something many new writers find as a hindrance? I currently live in a small community upstate New York and don't yet know many people here, but thanks to technology, we can do this through e-mail and even talk on the phone about the work.
This is big bro Les, the man who encouraged me to write and introduced The Alchemist to me, a book that has altered my life for the better...Had to share this pic with the world...Thanks for the ongoing support, man...I won't forget...
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Eddie,
ReplyDeleteGreetings! Do you mean literary world in your title or do you mean literally? Ann
Thank you, Ann...see, I definitely need an editor...thank you for catching that.
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