Ed , I like your idea.

I would only have to take a plane and 8 hours later, voilá New York. Haven't been in New York in years.

Marc you are HOT!

Al, great job on working out, I admire anyone who can do that.  I walk a mile each night and that is it, for me. :0P

Al, you sound a lot like me. Most of the time I never pay attention to compliments, but as soon as I hear critics I know they must be true...

Isn't that funny how we believe the bad stuff so much quicker, but the older I get the less I listen to them........or....maybe it is my hearing is getting bad and I just can't hear them......hmmmmm note to self get hearing checked.

Sometimes it's good to pay attention to critics, though. I'm in a creative writing class now and even though I'm good at writing short stories, the teacher has pointed out weak narrative moments in every one of my stories. And he has always been right.

Depends on the critic, Arc, a teacher whom you trust? Absolutely.

The question becomes when is it meant to be helpful criticism and when is it meant to tear you down and build them up.

I had a story critiqued that had too much stuff in it to be as short as I wanted it to be so consequently it was choppy. I put it out for critique from two people and the one asked for the sentences to be smoother, to explain more of the story and not be afraid to exceed my self imposed 4000 word limit. He was completely correct, all the information needed for the story to work wasn't in the story and the choppiness of the sentences was distracting.

The other person didn't like the story for various reasons (the oddest one was that the main character is a young blacksmith and is consequently well built and she interpreted that as him being handsome even though I described him as somewhat ugly) and proceeded to rip it to shreds. But that wasn't all, she then leant it out to two other women and on my copy it was clear there was a competition going on to see which of them could say the most creatively nasty thing about the story.

Now, that kind of thing I would normally ignore as being petty and useless but I felt like a trust had been broken: You give out a story and you expect the other person to look for ways to improve it, not tear it down.

Luckily, I'm a pretty confident person so while I got angry I was still able to move past it and not let the criticism kill the story but I know quite a few people who would have been in knots trying to move past that nonsense.

Sometimes it's good to pay attention to critics, though. I'm in a creative writing class now and even though I'm good at writing short stories, the teacher has pointed out weak narrative moments in every one of my stories. And he has always been right.

I agree, in any of my art classes in high school and college, getting critiqued was an every day thing. We would finish a piece, put it up for the whole class to give their opinions, I grew to enjoy the feedback because it always seemed to help in some ways, even the negative stuff I learned from it, it also helped me to be more confident. Because if someone said something really nasty in a mean spirited way, I learned to stand up for the choices I made in my work.