“I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them."

 "I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”

I can always count on Mark Twain to make me smile!

Feedback on one's work is sometimes hard to take. Partly because the feedback doesn't very often dwell on the bits that the reviewers like (if any) but only the bits that they want to chew up and spit out...and also because it can show a very limited understanding of what one is (I am!) trying to achieve...

So I've written, following the brief (I think) a quite poignant and gritty drama. I get this feedback: "There is not much humour in it. We think it should start with a joke."

 Oh how I laughed!

But I'm a professional writer. I can take it. I can rewrite according to their wishes.

I'd hate to think that my skull was in danger of being beaten with my own shin bone...