Critiquing

I've just finished writing a 1700 word crit of a 2500 word piece (although this is not specifically about that crit). It's taken me over an hour, which is not unusual when I hit the nit-picking, pain-in-the-arse flow.

I think my crits come in two types. They're either excessively short and can basically be summed up as "I liked it", or they're hellishly mean, raking every last word and comma over the coals. The first type are no real help to anyone, and the second type take forever to write and leave me feeling like the world's meanest bastard.

At least with the Den, unlike at FW, I know that everyone I'm critiquing actually cares about their work and knows how to take negative feedback.

But I also know that I am prone to using word choices and sentence structures that are unorthodox because I feel that they add something. I don't want to be a hypocrite and tell everyone else they can't do that (not that I'm under the impression anyone would listen to me if I ever let my head get that big), and neither do I want to stifle all creativity by enforcing every rule at every opportunity (again, I'm not saying I could do that, just that I don't want it to appear that I'm trying to).

I wish I could write critiques where I ignore glaring typos and focus on plot and characters. I just can't seem to silence my inner know-it-all, and I end up bogged down in details, forgetting the points of the story that need work. I know somebody has to do that, and that it's not actually important that there are people better than me because it's still better than nothing and nobody is perfect. But I also know that I should try to make my critiques as useful as possible, otherwise it's not fair to expect top notch crits on my own work. And I need those crits to keep my feet on the ground.