On Criticism

Blowfuzzy von Sassy speaks on criticism and responding to same

On the Matters of Writing, Creativity, and Responses to Criticism, Part III

This is #3 in a series of three related posts on writing and related matters. The views presented herein represent only the perspective of me, Blowfuzzy von Sassy, and may be contrary to the views of other editors or writers at Rac Press. This diversity of thought is a wonderful thing, and in some small way illustrates how subjective the assessment of literature may be. Though many of our readers are fans who do not write creative literature, I hope they will find these posts as interesting as I hope that aspiring writers will find these posts informative and useful in their own writing practices.

Now that you’re off to the races with your writing, your mind must turn to the matter of feedback, critiques, and/or criticism. Sooner or later, as an author, you’re going to get feedback on your work. I’m sorry to say that it will probably offend you or even hurt your feelings, but it’s important to experience that feedback, because if you flout the advice of a more experienced source and self-publish anyway, there’s a strong likelihood that you’re going to see those words again in the form of a paying public who may not take a second chance on reading your work, and who will gleefully point out its flaws on the review sections of bookseller or book review sites. Better to front-load the pain, work through the identified problems, then go on to refine your work further still. The worthy task of refining the rough bits out of our writing allows your brilliant ideas to take center stage, as they should.

The truth of the matter is that we are hard-wired to hypersensitive degrees to be defensive of our creations. If you’ve pursued a high-level performance task such as sports or musical arts including classical music or ballet, you’ve already endured brutally frank feedback on how you are performing or falling short on completing your assigned task. Despite the machinations of inane pop culture that have folded/spindled/mutilated the idea of a voice, in the case of writing, the collection of unique artefacts embedded in your writing is most certainly your voice. It’s the original thing you have to offer in all the world, and if you’re making mistakes that are easily identified, you owe it to yourself and your readers to iron out those mistakes so that they don’t distract from someone’s ability to enjoy the journey of your tale.

Regarding critiques of one’s work, a gut-wrenching scene from the superb 1998 film “Hilary and Jackie” comes to mind. Hilary and Jacqueline DuPre were English sisters reared in a creative household in post WWII England. Their mother was an artist who encouraged them to be expressive with their chosen musical instruments, flute and cello, and they were arty and more physically expressive than the staid classical performers of that period. Jackie would go on to record critically acclaimed cello concerti by Elgar. She would become very famous, indeed, but her sister, Hilary, was browbeaten by a teacher who did not cotton to how she moved her body as she played her flute. The film depicts a scene in her first lesson with this new teacher. The hide is utterly stripped off her in the most cruel and spirit-crushing way. THIS type of critique is not constructive, and if you see that a teacher is being gratuitously cruel or vicious, get yourself and/or your loved one away from them ASAP. This is the type of hideous evisceration that it is natural to fear, but the truth is that most criticism does not come from a mean and belittling place. Having said that, when I trained to sing opera, I had a voice teacher who was one of the best in the world, and when she told me something sounded bad, or I could do better, I believed her and tried to give her the performance she was trying to pull out of me. My studio mates have won Grammys and starred at the Met and opera houses around the world. She knew whereof she spoke, and I would have been foolish to ignore her advice.

Trust me when I say there is nothing more personal about you than your voice, and to toss your highest vulnerability out into the wild for the praise or derision of every other rando is a frightening journey upon which to embark. In fact, I’ve seen an entire generation of students who are fearful to participate in classes because they are acutely aware of how utterly a surreptitiously recorded video could ruin them socially for the rest of their lives. We tend to think of “going viral” as a good thing in terms of “Yootoob just paid me $7000 for 8 million views of my hamster video last month”, but such forms of social hall-monitoring are a serious hindrance to true expression. Young people now are painfully sensitive about how easy it is to become a permanent laughingstock.

It therefore tracks that when you have written your precious story, you have a strong proprietary interest in it being well-received. Therefore, when you receive feedback from someone, particularly someone who is working in the creative area to which you aspire, it is crucial that you remove your most sensitive self from the equation and look with clear eyes at what the reviewer is telling you they see in your work. Again, if an editor sees an issue, the reading public will, too, and they are likely to be less kind when they tell you what’s wrong with your precious creation in review spaces in the public sphere.

What complicates this issue is the matter of ego. We all have a proprietary interest in our work being well-received or even praised to the heavens. What throws a spanner in the works is the reality that—as I’ve mentioned previously—our stuff is not perfect when we first dash it out. Quite often, our minds race forward as our fingers struggle to keep up with the action. I have found that the greatest issues with my own writing and that of many students whose papers I graded boiled down to a lack of proofreading and editing. Yes, I just admitted that I, Blowfuzzy von Sassy, have actually put my writing into the public sphere only to find that I left booboos aplenty in the mix. You may even have noticed some in this essay. I have blushed more than once when revisiting something I thought was already perfect. In fact, I have a terrible but instructive story on this topic.

During my Senior year of high school, my big semester project in English class was a book report. My teacher, Mrs. Walker, had told me I was one of the top two writers she’d taught, the other being a young man who at that time was a working journalist. To say my ego about my writing was fluffy would be to understate. My teenage writing ego had love handles with love handles. I thought my mess smelled like roses. Alas, it was never thus. But I digress. I chose to compose a report on “A Clockwork Orange” by Anthony Burgess. I had read the book, thought it had important things to say about compelled behaviors and speech and such. When I told Mrs. Walker my book selection, she was aghast and asked me to please write about something else. I asked why she was averse to the book and what about it put her off to such a degree. She said she’d not read the book, but that she and her husband went to see the film when they were dating, and it was so horrific that they fled the theatre during the first scene and got their money back. In a fit of youthful/irrational overconfidence, I told her that I knew the book contained some terrible things, but that I had not seen the film and I felt (ha!) confident I could win her over. I turned in the paper and was angry for many years that she gave me a C for that assignment. My grades were very high so I still made an A for the course, but I was offended to my very core. Every so often when talking about writing, I would mention this story. Keep in mind that this was Spring of 1984, and I felt hard done by for decades. I felt that she had given me a poor grade because the film was unwatchable, and that she hadn’t judged the book or my paper on their raw and objective merits.

About ten years ago, Mom was going through some papers and found that report. I read it again with much more well-read eyes, and I could feel the blush spreading all over my body, not just my face. The paper was badly written, arrogant, and didn’t persuade the reader. In my memory of the essay, I made strong points, illustrating same with passages from the book, but the piece I wrote was flimsy, unclear, and did not use the original text to best effect. It was a life lesson in how wrong one might be when it comes to assessing their own work—objectivity is hard, yo. My adult, better-read self-recognized that I had, indeed, written this dreck, and I feel in retrospect that I owe Mrs. Walker an apology for thinking so ill of her criticism of my paper. In fact, the C she gave me was generous, I now understand. Sorry, Mrs. Walker! Thank you for not giving me the D or F that I deserved.

All this is by way of saying that the world is full of critics, some kind, some not, and it can be difficult to come to terms with the flaws in our own work. You must be discerning about how you take their critiques on board. Without a bunch of fillers, here is my specific advice on how to regard and use critiques to better your work:

· Don’t take criticism from someone you wouldn’t ask for advice

· Don’t immediately dismiss criticism just because it hurts

· Do use the critique as an opportunity to recognize the good aspects of your writing. If the criticism is on a matter of style, then maybe you’re innovating. Remember that ee cummings made a whole new schtick of eschewing capital letters. The important thing here is to be in a state of absolute choice about what you do or don’t express, and the manner in which you do so

· Do re-read your work to determine if there is merit to the advice of the critic

· Review the writing prompt and consider again if you hit the required marks

· Do look at the credentials and work of the critic, and consider if they know whereof they speak

· If a publisher gives you a brief “thanks for submitting your work, but no”, then be gracious and respond by email thanking them for considering you. If you are courteous, you’ll stand out to the publisher, and they are more likely to remember you favorably

· If a publisher gives you feedback on the particulars of the work you submitted, even if you disagree, do please remember that this editor took time from reading hundreds or thousands of pages of text because they felt you needed to know something vital to improve your work

· Remember that publishers WANT your work to be great, because they want good stories. In the case of Raconteur Press, I feel confident I can speak for all here in saying that we want your work to hit it out of the park, and if we take the time to give you feedback, then we believe in you and believe your writing has potential

· My ultimate advice, though, is that if you are angry or upset and disagree with the opinion of an editor or the contents of a rejection letter, write a gracious and simple thank you email, or don’t respond to them at all. Remember the wisdom of Thumper: “if you can’t say something nice, say nothing.” Better authors than you or I have been rejected again and again by publishers, only to finally hit that home run when they land where they were always meant to be. Remember that the critique was not a personal affront, and I would discourage you from firing off a sarcastic response, unless you don’t ever want to be considered for another volume with that publisher

· And finally, when submitting a story for an anthology, keep in mind that a rejection may not signal that your story was not good, but it may not have been a fit with the overall tone of the volume. I can guarantee that given the same group of 60 stories, every editor at RacPress would select a different set of 10 for a Moggie Noir book, and that is a good thing. Sometimes the editing task is brutal because it can come down to the question of which brilliant stories do we have to leave out

I hope this series of essays helps you to get a better brain-wrap on how to approach writing, creativity, and feedback. At least for Raconteur Press, we’re making a habit of Homework posts, wherein we post writing from an editor to tell the particulars they seek in story submissions for an upcoming volume. Read those posts with care throughout your writing process to help stave off mission creep.

One more bit of advice to pre-empt the post-critique regrets: if you are writing for a call for stories, an assignment for a writing course, or for any other purpose, take the time repeatedly during your process to revisit the original writing prompt. Make sure you’re hitting all the required features for the story, including format, length, layout and that kind of thing. My understanding is that in the case of much larger publishing houses, they summarily ash-can material that is non-compliant with the particulars in any way as a quick way to winnow the overcrowded field of candidates. It’s a shame to go to all that effort and then have a thoughtless component be the reason your story was eliminated from a competition.

Thank you for your time and attention. I hope these essays have given you insight into my own views on writing. I want to see your writing, but I also want you to have realistic expectations about how the publishing sausage is made.

Don’t you have something you were planning to write? Get to work!