Yesterday I attended my first ever conference-type event: Encore! That link may not work for non-members of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, so the short version is that Encore! is a repeat of a previous event's most popular workshops.
I have been letting the adventure percolate through my brain all day to try and figure out where to begin writing about it. And poof! An internet acquaintance known as the Bitter Homeschooler revised a blog post about people who make stupid assumptions about homeschooling. It had nothing whatsoever to do with SCBWI, or Encore! But the revisions she made were in response to some feedback I had sent her. Or, possibly, the changes were inspired by other feedback that was similar to mine. Either way, it was quite a delightful surprise.
In my sordid past I spent time at ConceptArt.org, a forum in which aspiring artists can get help in becoming professionals in the entertainment industry. It was considered good form there for all members to spend time in the critique area. As an illustration major, and as a professional artist in the games industry, you would have thought that my feedback would have been welcomed. Instead I was regularly yelled at by angry amateurs who insisted that I was wrong. The language was regularly sarcastic, sometimes florally abusive. Many people just never bothered to reply. (I'm sympathetic! As a big scary professional, I must have scared their pants off.) I can't remember being thanked for my feedback (which the Bitter Homeschooler did), or at the very least thanked for my time. It must have happened, but it wasn't the norm. I wrote hundreds of critiques there. I left when I realized how bitter the experience had made me.
Contrast that to a sprint review at my workplace. My team would watch as I navigated through a fresh environment. Their job was to point out every last pimple and wart. Conflicting opinions were noted and weighed. And then a to-do list was made. The following day I fixed stuff. Easy!
Okay, okay, so I admit I sometimes sulked over changes I had to make. Criticism is hard to endure even in the most professional of settings. But on the internet, a critique that arrives from a mostly unknown person, unexpectedly and unrequested? That's license to tar and feather them, in absentia, in front of an appreciative audience. Preferably with gobs of steaming sarcasm.
The author of the Bitter Homeschooler reacted to criticism with a level of professional grace that I know I didn't consistently exhibit in my own professional art life. And it was a rant that she so gracefully edited. Rants and grace go together like nails and water balloons.
I know this is important to the Bitter Homeschooler, because her mild-mannered alter ego is trying to get herself established as an author of young adult fiction. All I can say is that if this is how she responds to the comments of near-strangers on the internet, she is going to flourish when it comes to taking the criticism of an actual editor. So my hat is off to you, Bitter Homeschooler! You aren't as bitter as you would like your readers to believe.
And I seem to have wandered quite completely away from the topic of Encore! So let me bring it back by saying how deliriously happy it made me to be invited to not one, but two critique groups! What a thrill it was to be in the company of people who are as hungry for critique as I am. The aspiring and successful writers of SCBWI are not internet nitwits! I can't wait to meet with more of them. Walking into that busy ballroom at Encore! just about scared my pants off, but it was well worth it.
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