A Former Pollyanna Learns the Value of Critical Feedback
I REALLY appreciate your positivity,” said my friend Bonnie, after a few meetings of my very first writers group more than twenty-five years ago. “But I hope you’re not holding back. Sandra and I welcome constructive criticism.”
To be invited to join such an exclusive group—just three members, who gathered in Bonnie’s sitting room in her charming Victorian home every other week—was an honor. I met both women at a writers conference, and we bonded over a love of Southern writers such as Eudora Welty and Carson McCullers. However, both Bonnie and Sandra taught college-level English, and frankly these grammar doyennes intimidated me. When they shared their work I tended
