One of the first things I've had to tell anyone I critique or anyone in any critique group I've ever been in, or when I was working my way through school as a writing tutor, was "Do not defend your manuscript."It was written by Philangelus, as a comment in response to a posting on a wonderful blog written by a literary agent (which is a wonderful read in its own right.)
Unless you plan to stand over the shoulder of everyone reading your book and explain to them what you meant to write, you'd be better off just writing what you meant to write. I hate it when I tell someone "This isn't working" and she comes back with five minutes explaining to me why it should work, why I'm too stupid to understand the great art she was striving to achieve, and how unenlightened I must be (and, I'd note, everyone else).
In one of my writing classes in college, the professor imposed a "cone of silence" on the person whose story was being critiqued in order to prevent exactly this because while defending, we're not listening.
Yesterday I had coffee with my friend and critique partner Renee, who had in one hand the latest chapter of my manuscript, and in the other hand a stack of blank paper and a pen. Turns out she thought my chapter needed work, and of course she was right. I'm great at writing dialog, and not so great at writing description. So, scene by scene, she took me through the chapter, making me close my eyes and envision the scene, and then talk to her about what I was seeing, hearing, or smelling. Then she would make me open my eyes and write it down.
Thanks to Renee's persistence, that chapter is going to be much better. But I'll bet it took five minutes for her to bulldoze through my defensiveness before I was ready to get down to work. The funny thing is that at no point during that five minutes did I think she was wrong. It's just that it's very intimidating to have to face that the chapter that I thought was pretty good needed some serious reworking.
Then I read the excerpt that I quoted up above. I think I may try the cone of silence the next time someone is critiquing my story, and make sure I'm really listening. I'm curious to see whether that works.
