O Pinions!

On reviewing, mea culpa.

On reviewing, mea culpa
3.February.2021

I mini-whined at Blimprider:

"My reviews tend to be short. I wish I could review without rating. I also wish I weren't reviewing newbies or works 10 years old. I'm part of a blogging group and I don't choose what to review. I do a mini-critique in my blog. Then within the month I dump a bunch on the review page as I reread and tweak what I wrote and the rating I gave. I send a trinket that explains my rating system.

I cringe at reading their response. Much like I cringe at receiving reviews (I don't always write to get reviewed; contests? I expect to be sliced and diced, yet I won one this week). IRL 'around the table' face-to-face is less threatening.

So ... I'm guilty of not responding. Yes, it's time to correct that.

As for literacy... many people here and IRL aren't serious writers or they have a grade-school approach to poetry (which is my area of knowledge) or they are great story-tellers but absolutely suck at poetry (talking about some old-timers). How do I tell them that maybe they should study poetry before they go off on me. And ... at times I'm talking about MFA students here in town who think that because they can teach 'literature' that they can write it. Same on-line. I know I can barely critique flash-fiction even though I've written over 100 of them. Short-stories? *ack*

It's why I blog. I can share thoughts and opinions without the reviews ... usually. Got a review of a poem within a blog post last week that I need to get back to. The poem may be salvadgeable once I edit. But I just wrote a short piece today that I sent on a hand-written postcard. I put it into a blog entry. It's not meant to be critiqued/rated. But... if I reread it and think I can do something with it ... who knows."

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