Yesterday was online writing-critique group day. Chairing it is an effort for me. Oh, the members of the group are nice and as well-behaved as any group of writers, possibly better than many; but I'm just not that social. The group starts pretty early for a Saturday, and I get ready for it in some haste. Often, I've been up late the night before, polishing my own written critiques.* The meeting runs an hour and afterward, I'm worn out: an introvert has to make an effort at that kind of thing. It's still fun, like mountain-climbing is fun, but I do have to take time to recover afterward.
After an hour break, the full mystery-writer's organization meets, a combination of online and in-person, and I can sit back and watch the business meeting and whatever speaker or other presentation we have afterward. But I don't plan for much afterward; I'm still winding down.
Most of my life, I've felt guilty about this kind of reaction -- what kind of miserable ingrate is tuckered out after hanging out with interesting friends? Only in the last several years have I begun to admit to myself that yes, that's just how it is for introverts, and yes, I am one.
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* This sounds fancier than it is. A "critique" in that context is a set of marginal notes about things as dull as sentence structure and grammar, nuts and bolts matters like "Please add more speech tags here -- I can't figure out if it's Thomas Edison or Gypsy Rose Lee talking," or continuity/accuracy notes, "Lincoln gets into a Ford Model T at the White House, but arrives at Gettysburg in a DC-3. Do you think that's right?" and only rarely high-level stuff about plot and theme. Especially good writing gets pointed out, and most manuscripts get a paragraph of reaction at the beginning or end.
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
1 comment:
" what kind of miserable ingrate is tuckered out after hanging out with interesting friends? "
Um, normal people? At least that's how it seems using me as a sample size of one.
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