I wrote the other day:
I know there’s a theory that you learn from critiquing, but I haven’t experienced it. Or maybe I just can’t tell.
So it suddenly occured to me that what it actually means, when people say that, is not that you do a lot of critiques and then the words coming out of your pen magically improve. It means that when you go back to revise, you look at your own work like it’s someone else’s that you’re critiquing.
[Edit: Commenters on my LJ disagreed.]