Rita Mae Brown (b. 1944), U.S. feminist, writer.
Newsweek (New York, Aug. 19, 1985).

Christopher Hampton (b. 1946), British playwright.
Merteuil, in Dangerous Liaisons (screenplay) (1989).

If you want an honest review, do not ask your parents or your spouse. It’s not that parents and spouses lie; it’s that they are almost universally incapable of the objectivity and detachment that makes for a good review. Conversely, if you have teenagers, you can be assured of brutal honesty, provided you time your review request just right. Say, three minutes after uttering the words, “No, you cannot borrow the car tonight.” If you want nothing but unconditional praise and enthusiastic encouragement, hand them your drafts before agreeing to give them spending money for the mall. As in comedy, timing is everything.

dogfreek21 and I got to talking about critique this past weekend. She wrote, “Online, I can be thick-skinned- you know, you've torn apart some of my writing, have I ever emailed you back, completely crushed? But off line- it's weird. I am VERY emotional. Off line, my feelings get hurt a lot easier. Online, rarely ever.”

Thinking back to how we “met,” I have to laugh. Poor dogfreek21 was on the receiving end of one of my especially blunt and honest reviews. As I recall, I mistook her for a curmudgeonly, preachy old man with a college degree instead of an aspiring and vibrant young writer who was still in high school, and wrote my review accordingly. She took it amazingly well; in fact, she’s been known to ask for seconds. We have a deal, dogfreek21 and I: I don’t sugar coat - I still write my reviews as if to a curmudgeonly, preachy old man, if she writes like one - and she doesn’t take any of it too personally.

Here’s an example of the critique I sent her, recently, on one of her first attempts at a “stock photo” - basically, the top of her dog’s head ("Invalid Item"  ):

Of course, it could just be she knows me well enough by now to know I'd rather rip off an arm than hurt an aspiring writer or novice photographer. One of my contest challenges was to submit some of these photos to Shutterstock, a New York based microstock photo agency. New York agencies (photographic, literary, dramatic, and otherwise) aren’t renowned for a liberal outpouring of the milk of human kindness. I once watched a New York director gleefully rip the beating heart out of a five year old for singing “Edelweiss” off key. After just three notes. “Next!” The child was tough; she didn’t cry. But my high school music teacher almost did when she didn’t make the cut. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I admire dogfreek21’s willingness to tackle new challenges, try new things, and keep at it until she masters them. I tease her mercilessly, but I wouldn’t waste my time if I didn’t like her and think she had talent. Without a doubt, she will succeed at whatever she puts her mind to.

We all know this about our family members and our offline friends, too; they like us, they admire our talents, and they don’t generally wake up in the morning intending to lie to us. But when all is said and done, their approval or disapproval of the sum total of US matters more than any helpful critique they may have to offer. My husband is a patient teacher, and a good one, but he is not the best teacher for me. He has only to smile at my mistakes with a look that says, "That's so cute," and I'm devastated. Thick skinned as I am, I rarely ask him to read what I write, and I pray he doesn’t say, “Oh, can I read that?” Luckily for us both, he seems pretty relieved to be off that particular hook, himself.

I quit the guitar lessons. “Creative differences, eh?” said my husband.

“Yeah, Jerry deserves to teach someone who at least hopes to play like Segovia some day.”

“Who?”

“Never mind. It just kills him that I want to play folk music. That and the fact that I still can’t play the theme to ‘Green Acres’ after three months of lessons.”

“Quitter,” muttered Katie, opening the guitar case and playing Incubus songs by ear.

“Brat,” I said, smacking her over the head with “Three EZ Sheryl Crow Tunes.”

My arthritic neck and arms have been thanking me, though. They’re now able to hunch over the computer keyboard for an extra hour a day.

By now, most of you are familiar with National Novel Writing Month. I signed up for my first NaNoWriMo in 2001, back when there were still fewer than 200 writers participating. That first year was the only year I’ve completed the challenge. I think it was just important to prove to myself that I could start a novel and finish it, since prior to that month, the longest story I’d ever written was just five words short of 6000.

So I suppose it makes sense that Scriptfrenzy would appeal to me. What did I say about writing for stage and screen? That it was as unnatural to me as birthing babies out my ear canal? Of all the forms of writing I’ve attempted in my career, screenwriting is…well, let’s just say I have more confidence in my ability to write a prize-winning Villanelle.

Worse yet, I’ve found myself a partner.

I say “worse yet” for my partner’s sake. She doesn’t know me from Adam. We jokingly plotted the demise of one fictitious “Mr. Smith” on Microsoft’s QnA one afternoon, in order to illustrate a grammatical point, and our writing styles and sense of silliness meshed so well that I impulsively suggested she and I ought to team up for this Scriptfrenzy thing I’d just stumbled upon. Instead of wisely and suspiciously saying, “Who the heck are you and why would I want to collaborate with you? Couldn’t that get me in trouble with Homeland Security?” she said something that sounded like “What fun, count me in!” (I think her actual words were, “What is Scriptfrenzy?” but I took it to mean “Sounds like fun!” and put her name down as my writing partner. Hey, unlike NaNoWriMo and true to the “misery loves miserable company” principle, Scriptfrenzy allows you to write alone or in teams of two, giving you plausible deniability, should the whole project fall flat on its buttered buns.

Check it out at http://www.scriptfrenzy.org - but hurry! It starts in June. You know the drill: June 1 through June 30, 20,000 words of dialogue sandwiched between minimal hints of stage direction, or you’re a monkey’s uncle. If you enjoyed my “Dynamic Dialogue” contests in years past, you’ll love this.

AL writes:

Thank you for this newsletter. It has inspired me. And thank you for showing me an example of how a script is written, though I do suppose it´s simplified, so I would have to find some kind of format. I actually think I could maybe write one if I worked on it, and I don´t usually like to work on anything, and it sounds like fun!

Problematic Content writes:

But a completely off-the-wall sense of humor is likely to get us put on some crackpot watch list, somewhere.

Ah, so that's what those guys in vans are doing outside my apartment. I just thought they were looking for the yeti.

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