I'd like to formally apologize to the Beatles. I love you guys, but love doesn't make the world go 'round. Money does.
Can you imagine a world where money wasn’t involved? There goes commerce. And most kinds of trade. Nothing international would even really be possible. We’d be left with that archaic principle “exchanges”. You know, I give you ten camels and you give me your hot cousin. Win-win, right? I mean, I take that troublesome cousin off your hands and you get awesome camels. Who wouldn’t want camels? A crazy person, that’s who.
Trouble is, this doesn’t really work on Wattpad. I mean, have you guys even seen the madness that is the “Find a Critic” thread? It’s riddled with “payments” like a critique is a chore and all critics are petulant children.
Now, I have to admit that not so long ago I was a petulant child.
I thought that if I asked someone to critique my work as payment, I could get insight into whether or not my stories had artistic merit. Because I honestly wasn’t sure. I mean, we’re talking about a totally unartistic science kid writing stories. That just sounds worrisome. And it did worry me. So I did a “bilateral critique” exchange.
Result? Bad idea. Don’t do it.
Essentially, I got a whole lot of people telling me that my writing looked okay but my story was not “their thing”. And that’s it. I ended up with no idea whether or not my idea had merit, my writing needed improvement or how to improve in anyway. It was a real waste of time because I didn’t get what I needed to feel confident about my writing (honest comments that I could use to improve) and I laboured over stories which I frankly didn’t want to just because someone had left a “critique” on one of my stories.
This is why I honestly believe that critiques should be free. Payments lock the critic and the author in an unspoken contract. And it really sucks when someone doesn’t complete the “payment” after you laboured over their story and stupidly sent the critique off to them. I mean, that’s hours of work for someone without the payment that you expected. Fraud much?
By having free critiques, both the critic and the author are protected. The critic has no expectation of silly payments that don’t always help while the author can check out the critic’s stuff without feeling obligated to read something that doesn’t interest them. Besides, a critique is a labour of love and should be pleasurable for the critic (most of the time. There are always exceptions). And because it’s free, the critic can deny requests with impunity for whatever reason.
So free them critiques! Vive la revolution!