How I Learned

      The subject I want to write about is the learning I experienced while being introduced and initiated into a online writing community. The way that I learned varied, as there were a  number of different aspects of the community that honed my skills, however the most outstanding aspect was that of criticism. The online writing world is viscous, cruel and exceptionally creative in the expression of both characteristics. The first location I came into contact with such critisim wa son a forum group I became involved in. The group had dubbed themselves the Veritas, meaning truth, and had charged themselves with the care and up-keeping of the website, holy battalion in the face of literary pollution and dedicated slayers of cliches and Mary Sue's. Their weapon of choice was a process fondly known as flaming, the less-popular but still fairly common backup CC--or Constructive Criticism. Flaming is a fairly simple action to explain. It was reserved for posts completely and utterly lacking in any redeeming qualities, generally those rife with cliches and overrun with epidemic proportions of lacking grammatical skill. The action itself was simple; destruction. A critic so cutting, graphic and cruel the author of the piece in question would be incapacitated and crushed, and hopefully, sufficiently encourage to never, ever write again. In composition, a flame had  a wide range of possibilities. Some were short and concise, others far reaching, extensive and graphic. Among the Veritas community, your general standing on the forum and the respect you garnered by fellow members was based on two things; writing skill and your ability to flame. Those with an creative and original talent for flaming quickly scaled the ladders of standing in respect in the community, held in high esteem and often complimented and discussed by fellow members. Posting lists of targeted 'flammable' stories on the forum and encouraging fellows to add their own flame to the growing inferno was by no means uncommon.
      As a young writer myself, my introduction to this kind of highly critical and volatile environment was both intriguing and terrifying.  I became obsessed with the condition of my own spelling and grammar, spell-checking everything I posted twice and rereading everything for grammatical errors. This obsessive condition, while perhaps not the best way to learn, quickly and efficiantly shaped me up. The grammar skills I forced myself to learn have never left me, and are helpful in my writing to this day.