Let me explain.
When I first decided to pursue writing seriously (as in, put my all into something that might not give me any return) all I wanted was someone to tell me that I was making the right decision. I didn’t know if I was good enough at writing to make it my career choice.
My entire way of thinking was wrong, but I’ll get back to that.
Pretending someone is better at something than they are is detrimental to their growth, especially while learning a craft. My biggest pet peeve in workshops is when people are so nice that the person whose work is getting critiqued thinks that their work was great…when it needed a lot of work. I don’t think being rude is the answer, but I think being kind while being honest is.
Which doesn’t happen a lot to young writers. Which might be surprising, but this is my own experience, it could have been different for you. Throughout my college workshops everyone was too scared to point out the flaws in a work, and when they did it was done so nicely that it was more of a ‘maybe you could change this, but you’re fine if you don’t.”
Once, a professor stopped me from commenting on the grammar of a short story. The entire story was atrocious, but I was trying to nicely point out that the grammar was so bad it was hard to read the story. (And to be honest, grammar isn’t on the top of my list to criticize.) I overheard the student later boasting about how much everyone in class loved her story. Because we weren’t honest, she saw no need to fix her story.
Read the full article: https://thememoirofawriter.com/2017/11/30/hey-your-writing-sucks/
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