Almost time again...

Well, very unusually for Wordwatchers, our next meeting is on a Thursday.  Even more unusually, we're combining the critiques of our most recent short story competition ("Identity") with the announcement of the winner.  Normally, we'd hand in the stories, they'd be scored, we'd have a little get together, announce the winners and then, at a later meeting, critique all the stories.  Critiquing 'blind' is an interesting process since at this point I only have my suspicions of which of my fellow Wordwatchers has written which story.  I thought, with only six of us in the competition that guessing who had written which story would be accomplished with relative ease.  However, that has definitely not been the case - I knew I was doomed when I'd convinced myself that I'd definitely got Charlotte's story picked out, before realising that Charlotte wasn't even in the competition!So, I'm really looking forward to Thursday, for lots of reasons: to see my Wordwatchers friends again, to find who wrote what, to find out who won and, most importantly, to find out the rest of the group thought of my story - because it's the critique that makes you see what you didn't want to see - the mistakes, the plot holes, the dodgy grammar, and it's that, which helps hone my skills as a writer...