Friday, March 09, 2012

The Value of Critiques

A good writing day! Finally got back to poor J.J. Of course, it was only to get him deeper in trouble. The next few pages will be the real turning point of The Band so I'm really anxious to get the first draft done.

This is the second Friday of the month, so I met with my oldest running crit group. Right now we are down to three members - Lois, JoAn and me. JoAn is moving her story about the abducted child forward and the chapter I reviewed for today was probably the best chapter so far. It had a flash back to ground the reader in the problem and yet she included a hint of romance to keep it from becoming too sad. Lois is moving her adventurous women saga forward and this chapter had lots of intrigue. I received some good feedback on the segment of The Band they reviewed. They seemed to like how I sobered/detoxed J.J., but left the reader with the strong suspicion that it wasn't going to last. Just what I intended, so that was good.

This evening I went with Rita to see The Vow. I had seen it before, but I still enjoyed it again. The writing was clever, not sappy, but with a sweetness that helped to keep the tragedy of her memory loss from becoming too much of a downer. In this movie, the balance of pain between the husband who remembers everything and the wife who can't remember a thing reminds me of a quote by Pubillius Syrus. "The pain of the mind is worse than the pain of the body."

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