Humility

The meeting of the Idaho Screenwriter's Group is underway and a middle-aged man sitting to my left has just handed me a copy of his script.  I am to be the narrator, in charge of reading out the slugs and description while others in the group will be the actors.

At the end of 15 minutes, it was over and the inevitable critique session kicked in: what do we think, he asks.  Since I was reading, I thought I should skim the work again as before, I was busy concentrating on my diction and so on—I've been known to murder the pronunciation of words.

I liked a lot about it and in ten pages, the script was shaping up to be an intelligent comedy.  I didn't like the dialog of some characters, but the setting was real enough and the description was on-point.  I offered my analysis as such.

He offered me his thanks, told me I'd made a good point and the meeting went on ... cut to the end of the gathering when we were all to introduce ourselves and I found out that this guy whose work I'd been criticizing was a writer on Mr. Belvedere and a script doctor on The Two Jakes and The Honeymooners.

Ehem.

I blushed a bit, of course, but as he was so humble and accommodating, it was okay.  That's humility and more of us would be well-advised to adopt such a strategy.  If only to have an unknown admirer pen a praise post!