Crit Partners- Making it bleed...

You are looking at the picture and the subject line and wondering how the effervescent cast of Friends has anything to do with making anything bleed... not to mention what either of these things have to do with crit partners, aren't you? Okay, strap yourselves in and I shall explain.

Friends

Like so many in my generation, (*waves cane at the whippersnappers that aren't in my generation and didn't know who those people were* In my day we watched Friends! And we still do! The reruns are still hilarious!!) the cast of Friends spoke for us far better than most sitcoms. Most of us could name what Friends character we were most like (I'm a Phoebe but with a Rachel variety love-life...) and probably a few of us tuned in for that final episode. But the thing that made these characters really stand out when I was thinking of the crit partners blog is that they weren't afraid to point out both the positives and the negatives to each other. Each had a field that they were good at and their strengths made up for the others weaknesses...

A happy balance

This is what you should look for when finding a crit partner. My best friends dad is amazing. I look up to both her parents in ways too innumerable to list on this blog. But what he reads and what I write are two very different things. So even if I nail my genre and am doing things that will make the ones that read it squeal with delight, he is going to be bored to tears. This makes him a less than perfect beta reader for me. Equally unhelpful in a crit partner is someone who only flatters your work and isn't willing to look at it with the red pen of death. If you are so dazed by how wonderful it is, can you see the glaring errors that the author made? Nope. So to find someone who makes a good crit partner, you seek that balance...

Technicalities...

It is okay (even great), if you have a few different crit partners that you know are good at certain specialized things. For instance, your friend with the handy dandy English degree? They probably excel at finding comma splices and dangling participles. They can tell you if you misused that colon and where to properly put the quotation marks. However they may not be the best person to tell you that your flow sucks in chapter three. You need a reader (more on this in a second) for that. If you have a friend who either researched forensics for a project extensively or is a mortician, they might be a great beta for your murder mystery. Call your friend who is a cop and ask them procedural questions and listen to the way they talk... Medical questions can be fielded to your buddies who work in the medical field. It doesn't make you a bad writer if you don't know everything... It means you are willing to do the legwork, research your project and make sure that when someone reads it, flawless and seamless work is what they see... Not all the background checking you did to make sure that you knew what a body would look like on day three of decomposition in the hot desert sun.

What is a reader? Isn't anyone who reads a reader?

No. A reader is someone who reads your work like a person buying your book would. Who sees that your hero looks like an ass when he walks away from your heroine in the pouring rain in chapter five. If you didn't intend for him to look like an ass, this is priceless information. A reader sees that you had turned off the light two paragraphs up and yet your character is now reading a book in the dark. I once had a character in the shower, cold from a rainy day and she was blow drying her hair till it crackled. In one sentence. I had reread this piece a dozen times at this point and in my head, these were two separate items... shower then blow drying. But on the page I had it in the same sentence thereby electrocuting my character near the beginning of the book. A reader found it for me. Because the movie, as it played in her head while she was reading, didn't make sense. This is the magic of readers. They are priceless and when you find them, keep them if you can.

Define crit partner for me...

I want you to pick up the item nearest you and hold it to your face. It can be a book, a remote... whatever. If you hold it to your nose, you can't see it anymore. It becomes blurry and unclear. That is you and your book. You have written it, edited it and bathed in this world for however long it took you to accomplish the monumental task of writing it. You can no longer see it clearly. Now, a crit partner... Hold the item about a foot away... can see the item. They are distanced from it, just now dipping their toes into your world.

A crit partner is someone who:

1. Can find errors you made but can't see.
2. Can be a reader and see where you went wrong.
3. Can be critical and point out helpful things to adjust.
4. Can point out what you did well.
5. Knows something about a topic that you might not be an expert in.

A crit partner is not:

1. Someone who sees no value or entertainment in your work. (This will not help you.)
2. Someone who is so blinded by the good they can't see errors. (Although fun for the ego...)
3. Someone who will lie to you so you don't get mad or hurt. (This won't help you either.)
4. Someone who knows nothing about anything you wrote about.
5. Someone mean who just wants to hurt you. (Over critical won't help either...Balance.)

And worst comes to worst, think of how Chandler would tell Joey that he messed up. He wouldn't say something just to hurt Joey because he could... His goal was never just to hurt his friend. His goal was to help him. So even when delivering bad news, a crit partner will do so with grace.

Hope this helps!
Happy writing!

Cha-Cha-Cha-Cha Cha-a-anges...

I was thinking this morning about who I am today and how I got to this point. It is amazing, if you stop to think about it, how people can come into your life and change the entire fabric of who you are, what you want out of life, and how you go about finding it.

Not that they have the ability to change the core 'you,' so to speak but they change how you look at the world around you and go about getting what it is that you may not have realized you wanted.

I am not going to name names so if you were looking for some random episode of True Confessions, perhaps you should stop reading now. But there were two distinct people who have touched my life and helped me become the virg of today.

One was a man. Yeah. I don't use the word man loosely either. I don't know many 'men.' I remember that when this particular guy started hanging around, I wanted nothing to do with him. The timing was all wrong for a relationship and that seemed to be what he wanted from me. Also, he was NOT my type. At all. I mean... He was sort of a dork.

Perspective. That is another funny thing that can change. But I digress.

Anyway, what started out as something I didn't want ended up being a huge life-changing event for me. I learned how I wanted to be treated as a woman (I want to be friend, equal and partner and it really is possible to be all of that at once. I want to feel sexy and irresistible and be able to laugh with you. I want moments that take my breath away right alongside moments that I laugh so hard I can't breathe. ) and how I wanted to be looked at.

I also learned what it felt like to really lose someone you love. To have your heart break in your chest. But to have been loved well enough to have the strength to go on...
But with much higher expectations for the future. Never again would I settle for someone who 'looked' good enough to date. Never again would I settle for someone who 'kind of' got me.

Never again would I fall for a line of bullshit from a man. I had heard one actually tell me the truth... and I knew what it sounded like now.

So although that little relationship didn't work out (Obviously... I am single.) it changed my view on men and of myself. If I deserved to be loved like that once, I deserved it again. And if I couldn't be loved like that, I didn't want any love at all. It upped my standards. I wanted more, now. So without that relationship fail, I would have settled for shit my whole life and never known I was missing out. So even failure can be a victory of sorts.

The other really life changing event was a friend. I guess I never really saw myself as particularly strong or independent. I always had said I was, before her, but I was afraid to really be either of those things. I let people control me and figured it was better, safer, to be loved even if loved meant being controlled.

I didn't really get, before her friendship came along, that love didn't mean control. Love meant leaving someone to make their mistakes and being willing to pick them up if they fell. Not making decisions for them so they never fell. Falling is learning. Falling is part of LIVING. I was kind of afraid to live before I met her. Afraid to fail.

Then I met her and she was brave and sometimes bitchy and bossy... and I realized it was because she knew that even if she fell, she had people around her that loved her enough to catch her when she fell. I totally didn't have that.

Now I surround myself with these 'safety net' kind of people. And I keep away from those that would control me. Because I can see them now. I couldn't before her. And I try new things everyday. And I am not scared. (Okay, the strokes probably helped her influence a little... Hard to be a chicken shit when you don't know what tomorrow will hold.)

But I guess the point of this whole rant is that people come into your life and leave sticky little bits of themselves, their souls, with you. Even if they are gone. Some of these people make you weaker and damage you because the bits they leave behind are sharp and jagged and tear at who you are. Others leave bits that change your whole outlook on the world... Sort of like glasses for the eyes of the soul.

I would not be the writer I am today if I didn't have them in my life. I wouldn't be able to love as much as I can without them. I feel they made me a better mother, friend and all around human being.

If I had the words to thank these two people, I would embarrass them both horribly and thank them. Probably with tears in my eyes.

The best I have is to say thank you. Thank you for helping me see the world in another way.

Neither of them read my blog that I know of. So probably neither of them will ever know that I feel this way.

But it doesn't change the fact that they save me, just a little, everyday. And for that, I love them.

And I probably always will.

September Party

Every year for our birthday there is a party. Technically it is Santino's birthday party, but since a bunch of our birthdays all fall in September it has gotten named the September party and we all crash it and celebrate at once.

Last night (well the whole weekend really) is the September party. Me, Jus and Ash and this year Jamie, loaded up my grocery-go-getter and headed over to the barn for our "life" reunion. Better than any family reunion, better than any class reunion, the September party over the years has evolved into a reunion of all the people who matter because you chose to make them matter.

Class reunions are reunions of people you went to school with because you had to. Family reunions are people you were born into. The September party was a bunch of us who became friends, for some reason or another over the years (I got in by default at age 17 and then got custody of Santino through the divorce, or so I like to joke) and have stayed friends through thick and thin. When we were younger it was a drunken mess of us all slogging around. As we have aged, it has evolved into a tri-generational party. There is the parent generation, the our generation and then the herd of kids. It boggles my mind sometimes that the kids are now getting to be the age that some of us became friends.

For instance one of the kids used to come strolling over to my apartment when she was nine or so for "high tea" and to do art. Now she is seventeen. The age when I first started appearing on Santino's hood at Chanel Products. About a hundred years ago. About a minute ago she was even tinier and I could pick her up and carry her. She was a tiny little thing on Chestnut Street, all hair and eyes.

I stare at her the most as she reminds me how very old we are all getting.

Anyway, once a year we all herd to Santino's and eat and drink too much and visit. There is some drama, some laughter, some romance, some tears. Always it is a huge chance for writer me to people watch. Always it is a huge chance for me to let down my hair (which I don't do) and be a person not just a mother, worker and otherwise upstanding member of the community. At Santino's I am The Virg and nothing greater or lesser. I am all that I was at seventeen. I am all of my mess ups, all of my flaws and yet they like me any way. All of the gritty bits no one in the real world knows are out there when I go there... divorce bits. Nasty hide in the closet bits. Dumb things I did when I was a kid bits. And none of it matters.

And as well it is a time when I get to be proud of who I have become. I get to talk about what I have done. I sold my book. I am still able to be on my own with three kids. All of the health stuff has not gotten me down. They are my friends. It is a strange sort of safe zone. I feel really lucky to have it.

So after all that lead in, I went to the Sept Party last night and as advertised it was all of the above. I had a few dramatic moments. I had a few exceptionally deep conversations that may or may not be remembered by the people I was having them with due to alcohol consumption. I planned two weddings and one divorce (well, I have to divorce one of them so that I can marry the other and have the second wedding...) and I got more hugs than I get in a year outside my family.

I am relaxed in a way I won't be for a year and I have a smashing headache that is fortunately my only hangover side effect.

That and lack of sleep were my only bad side effects. I have to go over and clean up. I have to get some laundry done. But part of me wishes reality could back off for another day. I have a feeling one conversation I had is going to result in an argument... but life is dull without some drama and you only live once. Once spin around per person and my friend in Warren is going through something right now which sort of brought home to me, in combination with my own health issues, that if there is something you want to do, you kind of just have to do it and let the consequences be damned. God does not promise us tomorrow. He only gives us this moment. And I took my moment. I am content with that.
For now. Then again, that is easy to say in my cocoon.

Speaking of the moment, Pray for Lucas.

Lucas is a little boy in Warren. He went to a minor league baseball game. He was sitting in the stands in his parents lap. He is four. He got hit in the head by a foul ball.

He is now and has been in Akron Children's Hospital and has had multiple surgeries due to the major trauma to his brain. They almost lost him and don't know yet what will happen to him.

All in a moment. And he is four. He went to a baseball game and was safe in his parents lap. In a moment it all changed. The team was the Scrappers and it is all over the Youngstown news but isn't getting any coverage down here. My friend Penny is his great aunt. Can you imagine?

Between that and my issues lately, I have been praying for Lucas and thinking hard about my choices. No one promises you tomorrow. Live for now, do what you can, and never regret.

*Grin* Probably I should wear a warning to that effect.

This was the newspaper article re:Lucas
http://www.vindy.com/news/2009/sep/03/prayers-go-out-to-boy-hit-by-foul-ball-at/?newswatch
He was on the news too, but I can't find the link to the show.
This is the link to the hospital if you would like to send well wishes to Lucas, he is having a rough day...
https://www.akronchildrens.org/