Today my RWA chapter did a workshop on critiquing and asked for guinea pigs to volunteer to bring in our first seven pages. Being somewhat of a verbal exhibitionist, I was all, "Me! Me! Me!"
Of course when I got there my hands were shaking. What if they ripped it to shreds, politely or otherwise? Sure I go to a critique group every Monday night and have beta readers, intermittent and regular, but I realized once I got there that having your work read aloud to twenty people, some of whom you know well, others NSM, and several of whom are multi-published, is a whole 'nother story.
It worked out fine, though. Got a lot of praise for my scene-setting skills--people saying they could picture it vividly, could taste the road dust, etc. Which made me feel very good, given that it wasn't all that long ago that my critique group would complain week in and week out about not being able to see my scenes. Got conflicting feedback on how I manage backstory--I had to laugh when I looked at the written comments and saw "too much backstory" and "great job working in the backstory" on back-to-back copies! Jack continues to draw near-universal reader love, and I got some good suggestion on how to make Anna more sympathetic and vivid from the start.
Oh, and a couple of the published authors told me I was just so close--a little tweaking here, a little polishing there, and I should have something saleable on my hands. That felt good.