Reviewing with River

The more I read someone else's stories, it makes me reflect on my own stuff. I suspect the same is true for most of us. For that reason, unless they're just a complete lunkhead, I think it's impossible for a person's writing skills NOT to improve after reviewing.

Personally, it puts my own "opportunities for improvement" under a magnifying glass when I'm pointing out someone else's. I find I've got LOTS of "opportunities in grammar, but also regarding the nuts and bolts of the story. Fuzzy setting? Probably will remind me of something I've written that needs to clean up. Shallow characters? Yep, got those too. I could go on and on but you get what I mean...

I don't review as often as I should, but then again I don't write as often as I should either. I don't remember who wrote the newsletter recently but someone talked about writer's block vs. writer's apathy and that really resonated with me.

But I feel like writing and reading go hand in hand when I log on here, if I'm gonna write something for a contest or work on something I've already started it's easy to jump over to read a newbie and drop a (hopefully helpful) review or two.


-TPB