I’m a big believer in critique groups. I feel like I have to begin this post by reiterating that because what I’m going to write may sound like I’m not. Good critique partners can help you find your voice and see your way clear to whatever you need to do next. Bad critique partners, on the other hand, can, well, ruin you day.

I got a bad critique partner a while ago. In this particular critique group, you’re assigned critique partners somewhat randomly. The only requirement is that you get at least one review from a published author. This time around I got my published author review last. I debated whether to look at it before going to bed or to let it go, and I decided to look at it. Bad idea.

What I received wasn’t so much as critique as a slam. The author didn’t give me a point-by-point reading, she gave me a couple of splenetic paragraphs in which she ranted about my characters, my plot, and my writing, all of which she hated.

Let me assure you, first of all, that that’s not what a critique is supposed to be. Even if you don’t much like something you’re reading, you’re still supposed to read it carefully and point out things that are and aren’t working, even if you can’t find much of the former. Moreover, you owe it to the writer you’re critiquing to take her work seriously, even if you suspect it’s not going anywhere. Ranting about how much you hate it doesn’t qualify.

I was annoyed enough by this particular critique to do a little online background checking on the author. It turned out that we had a publisher in common, and she was having some problems with them at the moment. It’s not much of a stretch to believe the vitriol she directed at me was actually directed at the publisher who was annoying her. In other words, there was a Personal Problem involved here.

But the nastiness of that particular critique put me off that critique group, although it obviously wasn’t their fault. I haven’t been back there since. And that’s the problem with bad critiques. You can shrug them off, but they leave a bad taste in your mouth afterward. Which perhaps brings me to my point.

You may sometimes do a critique in a bad mood. You may sometimes do a critique of a genre you don’t particularly like. You may sometimes do a critique for someone you know personally and don’t regard too highly. None of that matters. Difficult though it may be, you can’t let your personal feelings get in the way. You have a responsibility to the person on the other end. Whether you like it or not, she put some work into this piece. And you owe it to her to do the same.