The teaching rule I had for myself was to never criticize more than three things about a student’s work at a time. If you hit people too hard with too much too fast, they shut down. They feel attacked instead of advised. It stops helping and starts hurting. Three criticisms at a time was the magic number. But was I going to follow that rule for Charlie Yates? No way in hell. He wasn’t some beginner kid at community college. He was a ridiculously successful titan of the genre. With a mansion. And a “whole drawer” of Oscars. He could handle it. And even if he couldn’t—all writers are mushy goo,
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