Saturday, June 26th, 1999

Michaela Gets Critiqued

Our instructor, Michaela Roessner, agreed to let us critique one of her twenty-year old Clarion manuscripts so long as she got to rip it apart, too. A brave woman. It was one of her earliest stories, composed in the days before word processors made revisions easy. A sampling of the comments around the room:

"What we have here is 'As we don't know, Bob' dialogue. Not only is this entire conversation an expository lump, but neither character knows what they're talking about."

"I want you to know that I still like you as a person."

"You took great care not to excite us overmuch with this story, and I appreciate that."

None of our critiques were as harsh (or as funny) as Michaela's, though. She took great relish in dissecting her own manuscript and when she she finished, we all applauded and thanked her for being such a good sport. We finished our special critiquing session with a group gift to Michaela.

In honor of the three birthdays this week, we brought out a penguin birthday cake and celebrated the Clarion birthdays of Bill Hervey, Tim Harahan and Sharon Keir. A paparazzi-like photo session followed, because everyone had their cameras out. Jenn Reese has put up a Rogue's Gallery of Clarion photos, so now you can see what we all look like.

Hmm