08-29-2014, 04:37 PM
awwwww--thanks guys! It'll take me at least a couple years to be able to edit this intensely in a useful way; as is, I feel like my edits require a few meters of red yarn and and handful of tacks. I feel like it's just bombardment right now, but I'm slowly improving.
--I pasted the edit of cjchaffin's "Diana" below
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I'm thinking about using this reply post as a place to house my thinking about good crit. It's a selfish thing to do in this way: I'm not sure how else to get smarter about crit, which is something I'd very much like to be. I hope that, despite it being selfish, it isn't narcissistic.
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Thoughts on Crit, first draft September 21, 2014
-- This isn't as long as it seems! It just looks long in comparison to most forum posts. But it's only a five-minute read! Tell you what: As a thank-you, I'm putting an amazing one-liner at the end.--
I. Rambling Intro Statement
Crit is hard to do well, and I'm not great at it. My process delivers good feedback only by substituting brute force for wisdom, and I certainly wouldn't recommend it as "The Way Crit Should Be Done."
The rest of this document is much more about why I'm doing crit this way, given the fact that I see it as sub-ideal. (Mainly, it's because I get a lot out of it, and not because the author does.)
That's all to say, while I wouldn't recommend this approach to everyone, I would forcefully recommend it to anyone who wants to benefit from critiquing the way that I do. If you read this instructional and think, "Man! That sounds fun!," then (1) you're unusual, and (2) do it. Here's why you shouldn't be scared to:
On PigPen, the author's reward is the fact of receiving crit, and the critiquors are assumed to be gracious, self-sacrificing saints. That means the critiquor is an Almighty King. You might get dinged for being too dinky, but never for being too muscular. If you want to write a 2,000-word critique of an 8-line poem, the author won't say, "knock it off w the overkill, jerk,"--*they'll say thank you*!!! Bizarre, I know, but welcome to PigPen, a place where the oinks are expensive but the mud is free.
II. Incoherent Assertive Claims Drafted in Something Resembling English
A. This is the Crow-verkill Format (or, said more candidly, this is the stuff I think I probably do when I go to edit).
I'll walk stepwise through the sequence, and then I'll say what I like about it.
(Step 1) Read every new poem that gets posted in Serious and Miscellaneous.
----
Overly Long Insider Tip: The difference between Serious and Misc is vanishingly small. Broadly speaking, (1) Misc is available to things like short stories, lyrics, monologues, etc., whereas Serious isn't, and (2) Serious encourages a beat-'em-up kind of cowboyism that's more criticism than critique. Nothing wrong with that, and my only point is: you can offer the same kind of crit in both forums. The forum labels are much more about governing author receptivity than they are about controlling critiquor behavior.
----
(Step 2) As soon as you decide you like a given poem, move to Step 3. Don't finish reading. (This early move to crit is justified below.)
(Step 3) Paste the poem into a word processor that isn't glitchy. (Losing over a thousand words of crit sucks about as much as losing a poem, and sometimes more.)
(Step 4) Write "Proofer's Edit," "Copy Edit," and "Macro Comment" on separate lines and paste a copy of the poem under the Proofer's Edit and Copy Edit headers.
(Step 5) Save your file.
(Step 6) Provide *corrections* under the Proofer's Edit header. (Remember: Editorial insertions into quoted or excerpted writing goes in brackets! E.g., the proofer's edit of "Its going to be fine," should be "It[']s going to be fine.") Where called for, provide notes to your edits on the line below those edits. Imho, below-line edits are superior to beside-line edits.
(Step 7) Provide line-by-line suggestions and other comments under the Copy Edit header. (The reason this is a copy edit and not just a line-by-line is explained below.)
(Step 8) Provide general feedback under the Macro Comment header.
(Step 9) Ponder life, death, and coffee while you spend a few minutes doing something else. I usually spend about fifteen minutes playing Candy Crush.
(Step 10) Read back through what you wrote, revising as you go. As stated below, revise freely, but only delete feedback that was given wrongly. That is, keep errata, kill errors.
(Step 11) Write a courteous one-line thank-you for the author's having posted their work.
(Step 12) Accept the fact that the author is unlikely to post a revision based on your crit, and remember that such a revision would be entirely beside the point anyway. This whole thing is about mastering and learning to enjoy processes, not generating outputs.
(Step 14) Go looking for (Step 13). Assure yourself that it's around here somewhere . . .
(Step 15) Save and post.
(Step 16) Check back on the thread for the author's feedback to your feedback. It's usually just thank yous, but not infrequently, it will include a note that the author didn't understand what you were saying. If so, reply with a comment clarifying your thoughts bc they were probably unfocused and unclear.
(Step 17) Daydream about one day owning a slow loris.
B. This is What You'll Get Out of Doing It This Way
[to be elaborated later]
(1) The Proofread
A deeper understanding; a list of ambiguities; potentially a clearer text from which to work
(2) The Copy Edit
A sense of what the poem is doing
(3) The Macro
An initial point if view
(4) The Re-reading
A fulsome point of view.
Authority and the ability to speak with conviction. If you work the poem this way, there's a strong chance you'll understand the poem better than its author. This allows you to make confident suggestions about revision that
--I pasted the edit of cjchaffin's "Diana" below
----------
I'm thinking about using this reply post as a place to house my thinking about good crit. It's a selfish thing to do in this way: I'm not sure how else to get smarter about crit, which is something I'd very much like to be. I hope that, despite it being selfish, it isn't narcissistic.
----------
Thoughts on Crit, first draft September 21, 2014
-- This isn't as long as it seems! It just looks long in comparison to most forum posts. But it's only a five-minute read! Tell you what: As a thank-you, I'm putting an amazing one-liner at the end.--
I. Rambling Intro Statement
Crit is hard to do well, and I'm not great at it. My process delivers good feedback only by substituting brute force for wisdom, and I certainly wouldn't recommend it as "The Way Crit Should Be Done."
The rest of this document is much more about why I'm doing crit this way, given the fact that I see it as sub-ideal. (Mainly, it's because I get a lot out of it, and not because the author does.)
That's all to say, while I wouldn't recommend this approach to everyone, I would forcefully recommend it to anyone who wants to benefit from critiquing the way that I do. If you read this instructional and think, "Man! That sounds fun!," then (1) you're unusual, and (2) do it. Here's why you shouldn't be scared to:
On PigPen, the author's reward is the fact of receiving crit, and the critiquors are assumed to be gracious, self-sacrificing saints. That means the critiquor is an Almighty King. You might get dinged for being too dinky, but never for being too muscular. If you want to write a 2,000-word critique of an 8-line poem, the author won't say, "knock it off w the overkill, jerk,"--*they'll say thank you*!!! Bizarre, I know, but welcome to PigPen, a place where the oinks are expensive but the mud is free.
II. Incoherent Assertive Claims Drafted in Something Resembling English
A. This is the Crow-verkill Format (or, said more candidly, this is the stuff I think I probably do when I go to edit).
I'll walk stepwise through the sequence, and then I'll say what I like about it.
(Step 1) Read every new poem that gets posted in Serious and Miscellaneous.
----
Overly Long Insider Tip: The difference between Serious and Misc is vanishingly small. Broadly speaking, (1) Misc is available to things like short stories, lyrics, monologues, etc., whereas Serious isn't, and (2) Serious encourages a beat-'em-up kind of cowboyism that's more criticism than critique. Nothing wrong with that, and my only point is: you can offer the same kind of crit in both forums. The forum labels are much more about governing author receptivity than they are about controlling critiquor behavior.
----
(Step 2) As soon as you decide you like a given poem, move to Step 3. Don't finish reading. (This early move to crit is justified below.)
(Step 3) Paste the poem into a word processor that isn't glitchy. (Losing over a thousand words of crit sucks about as much as losing a poem, and sometimes more.)
(Step 4) Write "Proofer's Edit," "Copy Edit," and "Macro Comment" on separate lines and paste a copy of the poem under the Proofer's Edit and Copy Edit headers.
(Step 5) Save your file.
(Step 6) Provide *corrections* under the Proofer's Edit header. (Remember: Editorial insertions into quoted or excerpted writing goes in brackets! E.g., the proofer's edit of "Its going to be fine," should be "It[']s going to be fine.") Where called for, provide notes to your edits on the line below those edits. Imho, below-line edits are superior to beside-line edits.
(Step 7) Provide line-by-line suggestions and other comments under the Copy Edit header. (The reason this is a copy edit and not just a line-by-line is explained below.)
(Step 8) Provide general feedback under the Macro Comment header.
(Step 9) Ponder life, death, and coffee while you spend a few minutes doing something else. I usually spend about fifteen minutes playing Candy Crush.
(Step 10) Read back through what you wrote, revising as you go. As stated below, revise freely, but only delete feedback that was given wrongly. That is, keep errata, kill errors.
(Step 11) Write a courteous one-line thank-you for the author's having posted their work.
(Step 12) Accept the fact that the author is unlikely to post a revision based on your crit, and remember that such a revision would be entirely beside the point anyway. This whole thing is about mastering and learning to enjoy processes, not generating outputs.
(Step 14) Go looking for (Step 13). Assure yourself that it's around here somewhere . . .
(Step 15) Save and post.
(Step 16) Check back on the thread for the author's feedback to your feedback. It's usually just thank yous, but not infrequently, it will include a note that the author didn't understand what you were saying. If so, reply with a comment clarifying your thoughts bc they were probably unfocused and unclear.
(Step 17) Daydream about one day owning a slow loris.
B. This is What You'll Get Out of Doing It This Way
[to be elaborated later]
(1) The Proofread
A deeper understanding; a list of ambiguities; potentially a clearer text from which to work
(2) The Copy Edit
A sense of what the poem is doing
(3) The Macro
An initial point if view
(4) The Re-reading
A fulsome point of view.
Authority and the ability to speak with conviction. If you work the poem this way, there's a strong chance you'll understand the poem better than its author. This allows you to make confident suggestions about revision that
A yak is normal.