Picture from The Power Within Reading Series, performance
Getting my story critiqued was... difficult. I felt like I was already putting myself out there by sharing such personal information about my family, information I knew they would not be excited to hear I was talking about openly. Having my peers then come at me with constructive feedback didn't sound like it would be fun. It actually turned out to be very helpful! My performance group would always focus on the writing or performance, not the actual content. They were very supportive of me sharing my story. I also really enjoyed getting professional critique from Betsy. It was really different from the critique I have received in the past. The only issue with peer critique, it's wonderful in many other aspects, is that you can only get feedback up to the skill level of your peers. This is awesome if there are particular qualities we are looking at in class, my group was great at helping each other with emotional honesty, and it's also great to get critique on other parts of your story that many of us don't know how to specifically improve. I think that all of us would benefit from hearing from more published authors because they have a knowledge of writing concepts that are far below our radar at this point. It pushes our skill and helps us grow in ways we couldn't have imagined.