I got back three critiques from critters. They are not as awful as I thought, but the criticisms seem to center around grammar and my sentence structure. I like to write in short declarative sentences. Nobody likes this. The readers would be happy if I made longer sentences with a few dependent phrases springing up here and there, bringing some counterpoint to the rhythm. Sorry, no can do. I suffer from the Hemingway syndrome of chopping sentences.

One critique did a good job at finding the typos. One critique had never heard of Flowers of Sulfur. One mistook my statement that I had never done this before to mean write stories when I meant use critters.

Seven League Boots, it turns out are not only an element of European folklore, but a comic element in a Terry Pratchett novel, which renders them unusable ever again as a metaphore.

There was a criticism that there should be another character in the story, but I can’t do that without writing a different story.

One reader was complaining that I was using passive tense.

So my verdict on critters? It’s good for typos and grammar, Ok for minor stylistic elements, mostly useless for structure and logic. Critquers may be good writers, themselves, but seem to lack any depth – probably very young. I don’t think that they will “get” the stories that I write because they are very different from what these readers expect.

The worst thing about critters, though is that it takes a month after you submit to get a story back. I am way too impatient to write a story and then wait for a month, revise it, and then submit it to a venue and then wait for two months for a rejection. I’d rather get the rejection right away.

Back in the real world: I got a story back from Future Fire with a form reject, and the Nigerian story went out to AtomJack. I don’t know where the Nigerian story belongs, but Atomjack bought another story from me that I thought was a hard sell. The lossy compression story I got back may never find a home. I will see if there is anything I can do to make it comprehensible and mail it off to the next sucker on the list.

Update 8/14/2009 – So far 5 critiques and they ALL don’t like the way the sentences are structured. I started looking for a book on style, but none seem to address this topic.