A while back I did something I rarely do. I let critics read my writing. Well, there are always critics, but I don’t have to know about it.

With some sturdy brick and mortar, I cautiously erected a fortress around myself while waiting for a response. The responses arrived. The walls were clearly not as bulletproof as I’d hoped. 

My wounds are mostly healed and since re-reading the “grading” sheets, I’ve allowed myself to recognize the heavier dose of positives among the negatives — the legitimate helpfulness sprinkled between ridiculous pedantry.

It is a good and necessary thing to let opinions of both experts and critics seep into the cracks of the walls you’ve built around your creations. It simultaneously instructs and humbles you. It sets you on a straighter path and takes you to wider vistas of scenery you had not anticipated from your fortified isolation, enabling you to paint newly accurate, more brightly-colored word pictures. You become better. Stronger. Tougher.

Also, rather gruesomely, it lets a little blood similar to a good old fashioned medieval leeching.

That’s probably a bit histrionic. I’m not used to being edited. So I was due for a dose.

I’ll publish the story for you that I submitted to these folks after I follow through with some of their positive suggestions that will help it not only climb higher on the grading sheet ladder but will hopefully also please you folk a bit better than it might have pre-leeching. Ha. I will not, however, submit to a critical squelching of my creative voice such as my imagined illustration of a 1970s green Amana Radar Range. I don’t really care if it was manufactured in green that decade or not — that’s the way I remember it. Green. It was green, lady. So there. Hmph. And seriously, who takes the time to look that up just to find opportunity to knock off points?  Oops. Histrionics again. 

“The Bathroom Key” will be a bit longer (not torturously) when you read it because my favorite (truly!) expert/critic pointed out that due to a strict word limit for their submission guidelines, I seemed to have thinly pasted a few “Jesus bumper stickers” onto the end. I loved that, appreciated the image, and wholeheartedly agreed! I can take that with me permanently.

So stay tuned over the next couple weeks as I polish ‘er up a bit, editing and buffing what needs attention. I’m actually looking forward to stripping off the Jesus bumper stickers and giving you some substance. It’s possible my timing might get waylaid by the birth of darling Grand Perfection #7, but I think I’ll have time. Famous last words.

Much love,

MM

The fear of the Lord is instruction in wisdom, and humility comes before honor.

‭‭Proverbs‬ ‭15‬:‭33‬ ‭ESV‬‬

not a bumper sticker