Writing Excuses 7.10: The Importance of Criticism

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Writing Excuses 7.10: The Importance of Criticism

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2012/03/04/writing-excuses-7-10-importance-of-criticism/

Key points: your first large work should be a murder mystery. "Your job is to make the reader late for work, unable to sleep, unable to do their homework. You want to make them unable to feed their kids." CITOKATE: criticism is the only known antidote to error. Writing is the only true magic, with incantations in black squiggles that produce almost anything! Preserve the mad genius. "Take that scene that made you cry and retype it."
( Human beings naturally hate criticism )

[Dan] All right. We want to give our listeners a writing prompt before we finish. David, do you have a writing prompt for them?
[David] Well, a lot of writing comes from dreams. So what if dreams became so much more vivid that when people woke up in the morning, for an hour, they couldn't tell the difference? What if you're in that world, where you basically had to mechanically lock your door with a lock that you had to keep poking at for an hour after you woke up, in order to not go out there and assume you had the superpowers that you just dreamt? But how creative people might be! Now, I just thought of that in real time, everyone, so...
[Dan] That sounds very cool.
[Mary] I'm like, "I would read that, so you guys go write it."
[David] Please don't promote... Please don't broadcast that, I'm going to use it.
[Dan] All right. Well, you'll have to work fast, David, to beat our listeners to the punch. All right, listeners, you've got it. You're in a race with David Brin now. You are out of excuses. Now go write.