Why arguing can be good

I'm not one for conflict, as anyone knows me will be less-than-surprised to hear. Sometimes, I have to say, that doesn't apply to my computer when it decides to be capricious... like now, when I can't get it out of italic. Grrrrrr.

I was recently reminded of the value of debate, of how much we can gain by trying to understand differing points of view. One of my two writing critique partners has a very different world view from mine. This impacts sometimes, and we argue. So there was a point of discussion in our last meeting concerning the question of strangeness of whole foods to some children.... to do with my latest middle-grade novel. She thought my heroine would have been exposed to enough 'foreign' foodstuffs not to baulk at heavy wholewheat, homebaked bread. I disagreed.

But lo and behold, next day I had an idea of how to 'up' the humour in that particular scene. And I realized how, after being forced to re-examine my position, my thoughts had been stimulated. Yes, a shake-up can be good.