Reviewers Anonymous

There are a fair number of items on site that have already been published. The writers consider them finished. There often isn't any indication the item has been published in the item itself, unless it's a novel or part of a novel. The writer saves that information for their review reply, which is sometimes longer than the review.


I've been getting comments and inquiries about reviewer education also.

There's a basic reviewing class at A-1, a reviewing group that started a few months ago that trains new reviewers, and one of the new writer support groups is considering doing something along those lines.

I've done a little tutoring on the higher end with INDEPTH2.

There are also some static items on assorted technical topics scattered all over the site. Nothing like a complete curriculum, even taken all together, though. A general purpose writing how-to book still has more information.

There are opinion pieces on site about presentation, but those are even more inadequate and incomplete than the technical stuff.


Whether a review is effective in causing a rewrite (reviewer's suggestions or something else) seems to be more a function of the writer's attitude about their piece, IMO.

There are those who have enough self-respect to want their writing to be better, and who are willing to put in at least some elbow grease and study to make that happen, and who are usually thankful for any help they get.

And then, as I was gratuitously informed recently by someone I have had the good fortune never to have reviewed, there are those who think that the quality of their writing is the reviewer's responsibility, and that it's the reviewer's job to sweet-talk and praise them into fixing their typos, misspellings, and punctuation errors, as if it was payment for making the changes. And by the way, they see no reason to change anything else because all their other reviewers were able to emotionally connect with the piece as is. There are also those who won't even fix that much, for the same reason, who see their mistakes as a virtue.




Northernwrites

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