M y first reaction to Sasha Miller's notice that the CompuServe Writer's Workshop was looking for volunteer guest pros to critique amateur writers was to turn and run as quickly and as far away as possible. After all, I'm still a new writer, struggling to lift his career off the ground. I've got very little innate knowledge to impart. I'm not in the position to either be able to or need to pay forward. And, like every other writer--to some extent--I'm selfish about my time. Why should I spend the better part of a month critiquing a bunch of writers who, by definition, have yet to make a professional sale, when I could spend that time writing my own stuff?

Then I stopped and thought.

I use several ways to learn my craft.

The first is to dig into the work of those who know how to write, searching for the craft behind their art. In this vein, I've scoured Mike Resnick's Kirinyaga series. I've dissected Maureen McHugh's use of first person and only hope to someday be able to write characters like she does. I've taken whole issues of F&SF and Asimov's apart, studying each story's structure and watching how folks like Allen Steele, and Robert Sawyer, and Geoff Landis, and Esther Friesner construct their tales.

The second is to critique wannabe writers. Many writers get confused looks on their faces when I tell them this. But I am serious.

I am, and always have been, a proponent of selfish critiquing. In other words, I don't critique to help the poor sot who wrote the piece, I critique to help myself understand how to write. Sure, with any luck, I'll manage to help a fellow writer finish a Hugo winner. But when I sit down to critique a story, that's not my goal.

This may seem a bit arrogant. But I "grew up" with critiques performed on-line. I was a charter member of CompuServe's IMPs, an ever-growing group of wannabe writers that has spawned such fledgling careers as Ann Marston (recent CompuServe HOMer award winner) and Lyn Nichols (who has appeared on the Preliminary Nebula Award ballot). Through them, and a cast of others, I learned quite a bit from on-line critiquing.

Notice the exact phrasing of that last sentence. I learned a lot from on-line critiquing. Note, what isn't in the sentence. I didn't say I learned a lot from on-line critiques.

Not that good critiques of my work aren't enlightening and useful. They are. But, for me, the most important part of participating in on-line workshops has always been the requirement to put in writing exactly what bothers me about the story in question. This requirement means I must dig into the guts of a story, truly understand it, and clearly write my opinion--thereby creating the perfect learning environment.

So I immediately said, "Sure, Sasha, sign me up for two months!"

Then the fun started.

The first month's fare included five pieces. I dug in, hoping to mine some valuable nuggets.

And, of course, I did.

This batch of manuscripts included one that is exactly the type of story I like to read--about humans and their interactions in a harsh environment. The theme was emotional, and the story was fairly well put together in the classical sense of problem, obstacle, resolution, etc. But the author lost me in numerous logical issues, characters that didn't behave correctly, technology that didn't hang together, and a societal evolution that wasn't well enough supported. Lesson--following "standard" story structure isn't enough to ensure a salable story.

Another manuscript used the opening paragraphs to introduce a cast of characters that completely confused me, then didn't tell the story from the most interesting character's point of view. Lesson--make sure I keep my main character easily accessible.

Next was a story chock-full of action and adventure, a hectic tale that never came up for air. Unfortunately, this pacing left the author with no opportunity to develop his characters, resulting in an interesting story that I didn't care much about. Lesson--fuel my plots with real people.

The next offering was written from the perspective of an on-line persona. Unfortunately, the man merely floated from encounter to encounter, never really doing anything himself and never really grasping a cause. This gave the story a distant feel. Lesson--choose an active point of view.

The last manuscript of the month was pretty clean, and it taught me perhaps the most important lesson of the month. Expressly because it was so clean, it was hampered with problems buried deep within its microwriting--a lack of precision in choice of language. This is where people "start to" take an action (but never do). Or where a fantasy setting is shattered by the use of modern phrasing. Lesson--the better writer I become, the more precise I'll have to be.

Now mind you, a selfish critique takes some serious time. It is not unusual for me to spend as many as ten hours on a single piece. In the case of these five critiques, I invested almost forty-five hours and reaped some solid pointers, primarily on characterization and point of view.

A quick breather, then the second month started. By now, I'm looking at Sasha Miller and Roger MacBride Allen in a totally new light. How do these two manage to read five amateur manuscripts every month, develop detailed critiques, and still find time to write their own material?

The sceond month's workshop included an entirely different batch of writers, with an entirely different set of idiosyncrasies, and an entirely different set of lessons to teach me.

The first manuscript, perhaps the most useful to me, fell directly into the same trap that I continually find myself in. The author overwrote every scene, choosing adverb-laden phrases and impressive words in an attempt to bring atmosphere to the tale. The resulting effort was hard to read and overly long. I flashed back to a valuable lesson first administered to me by Vonda McIntyre: There is a time for adverbs and description, but this is not it!

The next offering was written from a nonhuman point of view. In many ways, it was well executed. But alas, the background was just too thin. I never felt the foreign culture enough to grab hold of it, so I didn't connected with the tale. In addition, the author told the whole first chapter in flashback. Lesson one--I'm not a good enough writer to understand how to write different cultures yet. I'll have to study it a bit more. Lesson two--start at the beginning.

Then came a novel excerpt, this in a genre I'm usually not too excited about--light fantasy. But, surprise, I read the whole thing quickly, and I enjoyed it. Yes, it bordered on being sickly sweet, and yes, it needed to get into some conflict quickly. But, I was interested in reading more. Lesson--anything that entertains will keep people reading.

Next, I came to a story whose main characters were law officers. As I later came to understand, the author is a policewoman, and her characters act much like real cops do. Unfortunately, the story did not come accompanied by a police officer. So I was left to follow my gut instinct, and my gut told me that a professional wouldn't do some of the things that these officers did, making me feel the author forced the story in a direction. Lesson--the reader is always right, even when he isn't.

And finally, I found a perfectly fine, futuristic action adventure. However, the opening scene did almost nothing to let me determine how the characters got into the fix they were in, or what their actual goal was. Therefore, I spent the rest of the excerpt vainly trying to grasp the premise. Lesson--if the first scene isn't clear, it doesn't matter how good the rest is.

And that's it.

Two months of critiques. Ninety to one hundred hours of time.

Was it worth it?

I think the answer to that question varies with the individual writer. In my case, the experience was valuable. I'm still new to the profession, and I'm still learning. It had been a long time since I had done any written critiquing (my writer's group works on quick mark-ups and extensive discussion). So, for me, the experience was like an intensive, two-week seminar, spread out over two months. It was a chance to study flawed work and learn from it.

I don't make that comment to take anything away from the writers who participated in the workshop. They, too, are new. The fact that I make the same mistakes in my manuscripts as they do is what made being the workshop's guest pro so valuable to me. It's always easier to spot problems in other writers' manuscripts than in mine. Hopefully, the experience I gained from cutting into their efforts will make it a bit easier to recognize these issues in my own work. For that, I am eternally grateful to each of them for providing me this opportunity.

So, I leave this article with a single line of advice to new writers.

Lesson--critique to learn.