I've been confused for the last 20 or so posts.

I understand I'm not very bright.

I half-regret going into this, but only half. Granted, an in-depth discussion of literary criticism is best held in Literary or the book club. However, what is seen as the dividing line between litcrit and trying to analyze a piece of writing in this thread in order to help the author improve it?

This isn't meant as any sort of incitement, I was just mulling over hte points presented earlier.

I was wondering the same, connie. Sure, when you give feedback here you're face to face (relatively speaking) with the author, but it seems a fine line.

I was wondering the same, connie. Sure, when you give feedback here you're face to face (relatively speaking) with the author, but it seems a fine line.

OK. I got two emails, and I thought I should poke my head in. I'm damned if I want to do this. It makes me want to vomit with stress and frustration.

First off all, ita - not speaking for Astarte, but I sure as hell felt I was being asked to justify it, by rational answers only, please. That, to me, is simply another way of saying "I expect you to accept and approve my way of seeing something, but yours doesn't matter, it doesn't suit my sense of how this should be said, please modify." I have no desire to upset anyone, there is no one here whom I don't like and no one here whose opinion I don't respect, but I felt and still feel pressured to censor myself, to adjust my language so as to better suit a perception and flavour that, on my own palate, tastes false when I try to use it. This is one major reason I've unsubbed to this thread.

Not being a big fan of irony, the idea that I have to censor myself to that degree in a thread that's supposed to be devoted to creativity is making me cry. I dislike crying. So, not going to play. But I hope that answers your question about a sense of pressure, not on Astarte's behalf, but on mine. I am the only person I'm entitled to speak for.

To answer connie's question, which is a good one from where I'm sitting, I'm going to not censor myself here. I'm just going to answer the damned question, in my own words, as seen through my own eyes, and anyone who objects can damned well tell me in email, because I am the hell out of here:

When you are giving feedback directly to the author, you are speaking to the source of the creativity. It's really straightforward, if you aren't trying to cloak it in academic underwear. It goes like this:

I wrote Piece X. I have asked for comments from anyone who wants to comment. Ten people offer to read Piece X, within a certain timeframe. I may or may not have asked beforehand for specific feedback (Susan, for instance, wanted certain feedback, but asked me to comment before I read her specific questions and I did that thing.)

Seven of the ten people get back to me. Three of them all felt the scene on page four went on too long. Four of them had totally disparate takes. All of them caught the same three inconsistencies on page seven.

They haven't told a bunch of fourteen-year-olds how to think about the book, they've told ME. I'm the creator here, I get to weigh - yes, ANALYSE - their comments, in a way that is potentially useful to me, to make the work better.

And if that's not clear, or that upsets anyone, well, I can't help that. It's not my intent but it's no longer my problem. I am shaking and I am out of here, for the time being.

OK, I am hereby bringing up a craft issue: the sex scene.

Sara Donati (author of a lengthy meaty historical saga--I've read the first book and keep meaning to get back to it one of these days) has a series of posts on her blog here where she analyzes various sex scenes by other writers from a craft perspective and discusses what works and why. Works discussed include two Crusies and a Farscape fanfic by Robyn Bender, among others. Worth a read, and has got me thinking about the whys and hows of writing anything beyond "and then they had sex."

But my specific issue for the moment is terminology. Since I write historicals, it adds a layer of challenge to the standard advice that you should call the various body parts and acts whatever the characters would call them. For one thing, figuring out what terms were in vogue at the time isn't the easiest research question to answer. I mean, I'm pretty sure Jack, my sergeant hero, would think of himself as having a cock. Even if it turns out not to be 100% perfectly period appropriate, it fits his character. But I have no idea what terms he'd use for female anatomy--and if it's something like pussy or cunt, I'm not sure I could, or would, write it that way. And I'm all but sure there's no way he's ever encountered the word "clitoris." Fortunately, he's familiar with the part in question, but what the hell would he call it?

It's enough to make me a lot more tolerant of purple prose-isms like "her molten core," or "his throbbing manhood," or "his purple-helmeted warrior of love."

Actually, there's no excuse for that last one. But you know what I mean.

(Um, that was a big old crossy crosspost, BTW.)

I missed that subtext, deb. I'm not quite sure if Nutty cares if you like analysis or not, and she didn't seem to be trying to change your opinion on the matter. Just that when you call arrogant something close to her heart and mind, it stings.

Which is perfectly normal, isn't it?

Subtext?

OK, I really do apparently speak an entirely different language.

Which confirms me in the belief that I don't belojng here.

I didn't see Nutty try and change your mind about analysis, Deb, but I'll reread to doublecheck.

I saw her defend her POV, and explain her emotional reaction to yours.

Admittedly it is a fine line, but what author's work were we discussing here? My skim of the discussion was not a dissection of a work offered up for beta, but a meta discussion of HOW we should or should not discuss.

Yvonne Navarro's rant in a blog is the initial discussion point, right? It started off about reviews on Amazon and then went on to reviews more generally. What was seen as useful or not, and repeated iterations of different takes on that, with acompanying hardening feelings.

It's possible I misunderstood, but I don't particularly care for being told I'm being arrogant by having a preference for what I find useful in discussing writing either as a writer or a reader. And that is the impression I got from what I read.