Hello! Nice to see you this Monday morning.
As much as I have been enjoying the Monday Page Critiques, I’m afraid there’s been a noticeable downward tick in participation, comments, pageviews, etc., and I worry that it was getting a little stale as a regular blog topic. Ratings were too low, alien plotline didn’t catch on with viewers, had to make room for new J.J. Abrams show, you know how it goes.
So rather than devote every Monday post to the page critiques, I shall be returning Monday to original topics.
BUT! Weekly Page Critiques will live on in the Forums, where I’ll host weekly Friday Page Critique threads with the exact same idea. I’ll link to them in This Week in Publishing to remind everyone to click over, and hopefully the Forums will be a better place for the critiques. Please continue to enter one page in this thread if you’d like to have your work critiqued.
And now, since this could hardly thus far be considered a proper blog post, I will leave you with the most hilarious cat video I have seen on the Internet. Everything is better with hilarious cats:
Jeff says
As much as the Monday Critiques drew me into your site, I can understand the move. And as much as I am terrified, in this kitty attacking child world, to admit I don't completely understand something, is there any chance of getting a fleeting walk-through on the forums? I went, I saw, I scratched my head. Thanks! You do please in a very hopeful way. I'm officially a fan.
Lisa says
I liked the critiques but regardless of the format, I learn some great nugget from just about every post of yours Nathan!
Oh darn, that sounds obsequious and dreadful! Well however it sounds, it's true! I love your site, I really learn a lot – and the comments others post are great too.
Go cats go – my baby is called Isabella Creamy Diva!
Susan Kaye Quinn says
I think page crits in the Forums is a great idea – I didn't always stop by on Mondays for them, but would go back and peruse through them later (a mini-Nathan-tutorial of sorts).
As for cats … my 7yo has a theory about our fascination with cats on the internets. He thinks the singularity happened some time ago, where cats became smarter than humans. We have been their slaves ever since. (I swear I'm not making this up!)
Alicia says
That's so funny you posted that cat video. My three-year-old at the age of two discovered how to stream Youtube through our TIVO. He even figured out how to go to search and type in CAT (yes, he's a genius-not that I'm biased or anything). I practically have this video memorized because he would play it constantly.
Tricia says
Monday was my new favorite day of the week, waiting for your critique post to hit my e-mail. By the time I got the e-mail, the first and second post had gone up and commented on. for that reason, I was never a commenter.
Please don't send me to the forums. I have enough distractions as it is from my writing. Plus it's not the same as opening an e-mail. It's a more deliberate act of time-wasting for me.
But you are right, ecerything is better with hilarious cats.
D.G. Hudson says
Good programming change, Nathan. I was starting to avoid the blog on Mondays, and usually your blog is the first one I check. Too much of the same genre was causing me to lose interest.
I noticed that the same people were being loyal and commenting, but the main attraction WAS your redline comments. Great idea to continue the process in the forums. Many thanks for the editing/revising tips that you've shown us up to this point.
Loved the cat video, it reminded me of several cats I've had in the past.
Nice to see you're very much aware of the response your blog generates. Kudos to you.
Jeff says
Oh man, I just had a thought. God help me. I'm thinking Monday's will be dedicated to hard-core adult day and by Friday deconstruct to the basics of the biz. Am I far-off? If not, I love it. By Monday I need a vat of coffee and some reminder of a direction, or an objective. I'm tuning in, let me tell you. I'm looking forward to what's coming up. I love Mondays.
Dara says
LOL, love the cat video! It's never a dull day with two cats and a dog–many of those video clips have have happened in similar fashion in my house.
Miles says
Well, I'm sure that this comment will be way too far down the list for anyone to bother to read, having fallen victim to the predictable result of complaining about a lack of comments (an avalanche of comments, of course).
But let me register my complaint anyway. When I saw in my RSS reader that there was an update from this blog and remembered that it's Monday, I got excited. This had been a weekly occurrence, because the Monday page critique is a great feature. "How to write a novel" type posts are good too, but broad overviews don't hold a candle to really specific, in-the-weeds analysis.
So the critique will now be on Fridays, in the forum, announced from within the soup of links in the "This Week In Publishing" feature. This is an awful change. The rationale is weak. The solution is lame. You're burying the blog's best regular feature in a place I'm simply not going to bother unearthing every week.
Maybe I'm alone, but this change will pretty strongly decrease my enthusiasm for reading this blog. But I suppose since I'm not a regular commenter, and all that seems to matter is whether a particular post gets a certain number of comments, I wasn't the target audience anyway.
Nathan Bransford says
Whoa there, Miles. As I said farther up in the thread, I was more concerned about the number of hits declining on Monday rather than the number of comments. If you consider people voting with their clicks, it seemed like it was waning.
Let's just see how things go having them in the Forums for a while. And I wouldn't rule it out bringing it back at some point. Just have to keep things fresh.
Deb says
Uhhhh…there's a forum?
I confess I stopped doing more than skimming on Mondays, because it seemed like the same genre week after week. Yes, I learned from all of your redlines, and I read them religiously, but I wanted to see more literary fiction, and that rarely seemed to surface lately.
Perhaps it's time to move away from the luck of the draw and on to picking specific pieces you think provide a particular teaching opportunity? I'm sure reading all of the entries would be overwhelming, so that might not be realistic.
Nathan Bransford says
Yeah, the challenge with picking out pages individually is that it entails a ton of time reading through and then deciding which one would make for the right kind of critique. It seemed a bit more democratic as well to make it random.
Anonymous says
It might be interesting to offer a poll on the genre of writing that visitors to your Blog are writing. It seems to me that many literary fiction and serious science fiction writers used to comment here, but many of those rarely comment anymore and a number of them have now gotten agents. I've noticed a lot of romance and YA fantasy writers commenting lately and wondered if that might account for the same genres of excerpts posted for critique most Mondays.
Polenth says
You wouldn't need to read them all to find one of a genre you've not done yet. You can search for the genre name in the thread and take the first match.
I don't think it needs to be done every time, but throwing in a chosen one every now-and-then would help mix up the genres (and mean less popular genres get some critique time).
Nathan Bransford says
anon-
Here's that poll from last year — not sure it's changed too much since then.
Ted Cross says
I never commented because I never had anything to add to your own analysis. I enjoyed learning from you and seeing your thoughts. I'll certainly keep watching them in the forums
Anonymous says
I'd just like to know if anyone else gets 'cold feet' on a book you have written, has now got accepted but u suddenly have this intuition this is going too far (I mean the content – non fiction).
ElizaJane says
I loved the page critiques. Nothing like seeing the agent in action for getting a sense of ins and outs, do's and don'ts. I rarely contributed a comment but definitely read everything.
k10wnsta says
Deb actually raises a very good point. It's got to where I see YA and I can't find enough face to palm. I just can't help wondering 'is everyone working in this genre because they perceive it as having a lower literary standard?'. Analogously, I see formulaic pandering to young adults in shows like Hannah Montana and feel so much shame for the producers who obviously have none. It's not a genre devoid of high-quality, creative stuff that can appeal to everyone (hello, iCarly), it just seems like people may be gravitating to it because the requirements for success are a good deal lower (of course, if you submitted a YA work for critique, I'm not talking about you).
Nathan, you should make a little rule requiring a different genre every week. If a mystery is critiqued one week, you just keep rolling til you get something other than a mystery the following week. Of course, you wouldn't want to disclose passing over someone's submission for this reason…and I guess there's the added difficulty of folks (like me) who didn't know how to classify theirs, but it would still insure a fresh perspective every week.
Jeff says
Anon 9:49, I think you have described cold-feet. If you think it's good, and your sources aren't lies, we're talking non-fiction, step right up to the altar. The beauty of the world we live in, where people get paid to write books, is that argument is healthy and invited, if not inviting. And by the way, a pay check is good, and human memory is bad. Write a rethink later. The non-fiction game, as far as I can read, is this is what I think at this moment. It's all in the declarative wording. Get some!
Mira says
Um, so it's considered a proper blog post if there's a funny cat video? Ha, ha. 🙂
That video was funny. I especially liked when the bear got chased by the cat.
I love cats. They're so cute and purry.
Well, personally, I am sad to see the critiques leave because they are incredibly valuable. You are so gifted, Nathan. But, I trust your instincts, and also see that you want to experiment alittle.
It's extremely generous of you to continue the critiques in the forums (and feature them sometimes on the blog) since that's extra work for you (!). The whole thing is unbelievably generous since most of us are not your clients. It's quite something that do these for us! Truly.
In terms of genre, I'm alittle puzzled. I didn't feel like any of the critiques were genre specific. It was more about pacing, timing, editing, word choice. I felt all the critiques were genre transferrable and valuable.
So, however and whenever you decide to do the critiques, I'm there. And thank you.
k10wnsta says
@Sheil Cull –
A cat can most definitely love you like a dog. It's just not something you get unconditionally as a result of feeding them. It's a lot more like cultivating a friendship with another person in that you really have to earn their trust.
Related storytime:
One of my cats (Shadow) always comes up behind my desk chair and hollers at me when he wants attention. He knows I'll pick him up and put him in my lap to pet him – a result he finds pleasing. He's done it once a day for I-don't-know-how-many years.
On one occasion, however, he trumpeted from behind me and when I spun to pick him up, he bounced a couple feet out of reach and meowed at me again. The reaction was so out of place, I stood and reached for him, but every time I got close enough to pick him up, he'd bunny-hop another few feet out of reach and scream again. Eventually, I pursued him out of the office, down the hall, and into the laundry room, where he perched himself up on the water heater and offered one last meow before staring down behind it. It was so peculiar, I followed his gaze and saw a small leak had sprung on one of the pipe joints and water had been silently trickling down the backside of the heater and accumulating in the floor and subfloor. It took some effort to fix the floor, but not nearly as much as if Shadow hadn't pointed it out* when he did.
*I say he pointed it out because I honestly believe he had actual intent in leading me there.
One might say he didn't know any better or that it was just coincidence, but it had never happened before and it has never happened since, so I don't know. Perhaps I should intentionally spring another leak on it to see if he'll do it again.
wendy says
Nathan, like Misty Waters I'm disappointed as I enjoyed reading your comments and found them very helpful. I use to read from the mail feed thingy, though, and didn't visit the site. And like Ryan I don't like commenting on other people's work – except Rick's. The observations are coming, Rick! Sorry for the delay it's been one thing after another, but I've caught up now, and your crit is the first thing I'm doing. I've read most of your work, though and love it. 🙂
And while I'm making personal comments, thank you Nathan for getting back so quickly on the query I sent, surely breaking all records. I appreciate you, too.
Zak says
I've only just found your blog after The Writers Chat on Sunday, so I'm dissapointed that I didn't get to see how all this works 🙁
Oh well, I'll just have to suffer through a cat video 🙂
Zak. =^..^=
Anonymous says
Nathan, I realize that you've already decided to do away with Page Critique Mondays. But, since the discussion in the comments section has suggested potential reasons why pageviews and comments may have fallen off for the Monday critiques, I'll suggest another possibility. Has the number of unique visitors to your blog fallen off for Page Critique Mondays, or only the total number of pageviews for Monday? Many days, I revisit your Blog many times in order to check in on the ongoing discussion. When Page Critique Mondays started, I set aside some time on Mondays to read the excerpt and offer my critique. I soon felt that wasn't a great use of my time, since once you posted your critique, the comments section quickly became little more than people saying you were brilliant. For anyone who might have posted an opposite opinion in their own critique, their time spent was quickly wasted, as…seriously…whose opinion would the author end up using, your opinion or the opposite opinion? Since there wasn't any rigorous discussion going on in the comments section, I eventually started checking in to look at your Monday Blog either very late Monday or early Tuesday in order to read only the excerpt and your critique. If you do go back to Page Critique Monday, you might want to offer only your own critique, rather than have other people critique first and risk having their critique quickly become a total waste of time. Just my two cents.
Anonymous says
Hi Nathan
Big thanks for all your time and effort. Your Monday crit was something to look forward to each week – like a special treat to be savoured after a dull menu.
I was anon 11.58am Aug 23. I just wanted to add something but Anon 1.09am has already said it.
If there's a topic I'm researching, I often return to your blog several times e.g. looking up queries and, as I'm a techno-noob, I get lost frequently, get side-tracked and refresh the page so does that count as new hits?
With the Monday blog, I usually just read it once or twice and digest slowly as there's no need to wander off.
I don't care what genre it is. T'is the writing wot counts… Please don't make me enter the forum maze.
J. T. Shea says
Anonymous 1:42 am, I delayed joining the Forums for months, but they turned out to be much easier to navigate than I expected, and just as easy to comment on as the blog.
Chuck H. says
Speaking as one of the lucky ones who received a critique, I'm sorry to see the blog version go. I saw it coming. Any other post gets 100-130 comments and page critique Monday gets 23. No brainer. But like so many others, I usually get here late and by then all has been said. I tried commenting first and then reading your and everyone else's take on that day's selection but found that less than satisfactory. I've been avoiding the forums because my wife says I spend waaayyyy too much time online and they do draw one in. I may try to just do the critiques but I'm not hopeful. Thanks for all the help and good luck with the change.
WV: shaken – not stirred?
Chuck H. says
And to paraphrase Indiana Jones, cats, why did it have to be cats?
Mira says
Anon 1:42,
I'm with J.T. The forums are easy for the page critique. Just click on the link, and look at the bottom topic.
That's the page critique.
Couldn't be easier to find – really.
Jessica Strider says
I loved your page critiques. It was interesting getting a view of how working with an editor would go (here are things you're doing wrong/need to change) while also learning some of those things in advance to help with the pre-submission manuscript.
I generally read your posts on google reader (where you have 3845 subscribers, according to their stats) and only rarely clicked through. Guess I should have clicked through more often.
The problem for me with the forum is that it's another place I have to manually check (as opposed to the reader which shows up automatically).
Regardless, I love your blog. Thanks for all the hard work you put into it.
catheroo says
What a great video for a Monday!
So much hilarity, and I was especially happy to see my very own kitty cat kneading at around 2:30.
Marla Warren says
Nathan,
You want hilarious cats?
You’ve got hilarious cats!
Enjoy everyone!
Kitty Outfoxes Doggie
Kitty Hates His Reflection
Kitties on a Slide
Hungry, Hungry Kitty
Kitten Afraid of Remote Control Mouse
Shooted Kitty
Surprised Kitteh
Kitty versus the cat carrier
And, of course, the Engineer’s Guide to Cats series (which answers the question of what happens to teenage boys who grow older but don’t grow up):
An Engineer's Guide to Cats
An Engineer's Guide to Voting (Ginger Cat for President)
An Engineer's Guide to Cat Yodeling (with Cat Polka)
Halloween Kitties
Christmas Laser Beam Cats
Two great sites with funny photos and videos
For cats:
https://icanhascheezburger.com/
For dogs:
https://ihasahotdog.com/
Non-cat fun:
Frank, can we please…
OMG! SLOW DOWN!
Nina says
Have you seen Simon the Cat on Youtube? My husband almost died laughing (seriously! I've never seen him laugh so hard).
elfspirit333@gmail.com says
LOVE the cat videos. I always read the Monday page critiques, but my interest didn't show up on the radar, as I didn't comment. Consider this a vote in favor of continuing the critiques in whatever form works best for you.