Feedback! I found feedback!

Well, not yet, exactly, lol...

My wife and I have signed up for Critters.org, a site for authors to critique each others' work. So far my first submission is not due up in the available queue till thew end of the month. Once it's up, it's status is contingent on my having done a minimum number of quality critiques of other writers' works. You need to do about one a week, though you can get away with missing about one a month. So far I'm at about 800% of my quota, not counting the short one that only counts for half credit. =o)

I love this site. Nothing helps the average person learn the way trying to teach will, and a good critique should always be about how to improve a piece, rather than just flaming what's wrong with it. I get to read stories without having to spend money on books and magazine subscriptions I don't really want, and when they aren't so good...well, the price was right. All it cost me was the time and energy to evaluate and make suggestions, which improves *my* craft. Win/win!

I even built a template, and have already started applying it to my own works.

As an amusing observation, it appears to be a loose rule of thumb that you can pick the better stories by looking to see how many critiques have already been done. A good story with flaws gets lots. Stories with very few critiques are either so good no one has any suggestions (rare, but it does happen) or bad enough that no one wants to flame it.

This site rocks. :)