Critical mess

Word count: 394            Reading time: 1-2 mins.

No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft said HG Wells. I wish I’d known that quote when I sent my first short story to a competition. It was rated Highly Commended and one of the judges asked me if I’d like some help polishing it. Without so much as a by-your-leave, she rewrote it and read her version to the audience on the awards night. Her rewrite wasn’t wrong; it was just different. It wasn’t my voice.

Do-not-rewrite-someone-else’s-work was my first lesson in editing. Here are a few more I’ve picked up since:

1. It takes courage to share your work; make sure the person who sees it is worthy of your trust.
2. A good writing partner pinpoints the areas that might benefit with revision. She never replaces your words with hers but suggests solutions to problem areas.
3. A constructive editor encourages your strengths. Note: I’ve paid for professional reviews where the readers seemed totally unfamiliar with classical thinking like: correction does much, but encouragement does more (Goethe). If you have to ask questions - like what parts worked better than others - it’s time to find someone else to help you.
4. The more you study and learn about writing, the better your writing gets and the more you have to offer as a writing partner and editor.
5. Some people want intensive feedback; others only want their typos caught. Remember Somerset Maugham’s words: [some] people ask for criticism but they only want praise. If you’re committed to doing a meaningful review, the latter will waste your time.  
6. You don’t have to take onboard everyone’s suggestions but it doesn’t hurt to listen. You’re the creator; you decide whose opinions are most relevant.
7. Still, even when you think you’ve absolutely nailed something, be receptive to the fact that it could be better.

Once books are published and hit the public domain, imperfect strangers emerge from the woodwork to criticize them. Until then, we can select readers who help us strengthen our voices, not drown them.

What are your expectations from an editor or writing partner? Is there something else you hope for that I haven’t listed? Do you use other writers, professional editors, or good friends - or a combination of all three - to help you improve?

***

Artwork by: Tom Morris via Wiki Commons

Jump!

 

Word count: 361                     Reading time: 1-2 minutes

Kingsley Amis said of Dylan Thomas: “A pernicious figure, one who has helped to get Wales and Welsh poetry a bad name…and done lasting harm to both.”

Paul Theroux reviewed Erica Jong’s novel Fear of Flying in a similar tone: “This crappy novel, misusing vulgarity to the point where it becomes purely foolish, picturing women as a hapless organ animated by the simplest ridicule, and devaluing imagination in every line…represents everything that is to be loathed in American fiction today.”

That’s the thing about writing – no matter how good you are, someone will disapprove and will not mind broadcasting their contempt. It’s very much a leap of faith to work and hope that someone, some day, somewhere, will eventually value what has taken you months or years to produce. 

When you decide to write, you have to grow a thick hide so that people’s thoughtless comments don’t stop you in your tracks. I gave one of my first short stories to an online critique group and an American writer replied, in clearly challenging tones, that he’d never heard of the bird called a crimson rosella. Because that one detail was inauthentic to him, he took it as grounds to tear apart the rest of the work. I shrank at his criticism – for a little while. Then I quit the group and continued writing for the benefit of one close friend and my darling husband. Nervously I sent the next two stories to a competition where they received minor awards. The point is, if I hadn’t been resilient and just a little bit brave, I might have stopped writing altogether.

Imagine if Dylan Thomas had let Amis’s criticism stop him or if Jong had tossed writing because of Theroux’s fine sensibilities. Maybe you’re the next literary sensation but how will you know if you don’t just jump in and do it?  And keep doing it…

Soren Kierkegaard said, “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose one’s life.”

Do unkind comments from any of your early readers haunt you still? What helps you dare to continue?

***

Photos by: Oleg Kozlov (above) & Kafusfoto

On your mark....

Word Count: 398                                  Reading time: 1-2 mins.

Australian swimmer Leisel Jones has collected a sack of Olympic medals since she first competed in Sydney in 2000: 3 gold, 4 silver, and 1 bronze. Not satisfied with that outstanding record the Herald Sun newspaper attacked her this year because of her body size. How much does a person have to give before it’s enough?

When I think of Olympic athletes, I think of how young they have to start, how early someone has to recognize their talent and start grooming them for a prize way down the road. I envision all the dark mornings when parents get up and chauffeur them (if they are lucky enough to have a car) to far away venues. I imagine all the holidays that focus on sporting competitions. The costs must be off the scale and family sacrifices immeasurable, like those of Chinese diver Wu Minxia who rarely speaks to her parents so her training won’t be disrupted by potentially disturbing news.

All that perseverance for a few weeks in the sun, once every four years if an athlete is lucky enough to qualify for more than one Olympic meet. And if they are off their form at any point in the qualifying rounds, they may never even hear the starting pistol; they’re finished before they’re out of the gate. Injuries may end their careers permanently.

So if you train and train and never make it beyond the city championships, has all that effort gone to waste? Not really; the habits of hard work, endurance, and courage last a lifetime.

Writing also demands hard work, endurance and courage. Katherine Anne Porter called courage the “first essential for a writer”; it’s essential if we’re ever going to be true to our stories and our characters. Getting a novel to reader-ready status demands both hard work and perseverance. In the end, if we are lucky, we might achieve moderate success, maybe the equivalent of a win at a city championship: a publication and good sales. And, unlike Leisel Jones, even the greatest among us will never have their pictures splashed the front page of the paper, questioning whether they are fit enough to compete in the frantic world of publishing.

What type of writing athlete are you? When you’ve had a bad day writing do you put your losses behind you and jump back into the pool, ready for the next heat?

***

Photo by: Epicstock

Take a deep breath

                                    

Word count: 285                             Reading time: 1-2 mins.

No man is an island entire of itself wrote John Donne. The advice-to-writers’ take on that quote is: if you want to succeed you must join a writers’ group. This advice pops up frequently and, for all the benefits group membership promises, there is a potentially disastrous downside: the destruction of your work.

I have seen a writer leave a meeting early, only to have another member of the group turn to the rest and say with a sneer, “Who’s going to want to read something like that?”

I sat speechless and wondered, “Is that how my prose will be discussed when I am out of earshot?”

Likewise I have had fiction shredded by members of an online group who felt that anyone else’s success detracted from theirs. I left that group quickly and didn’t bother to report back when the two much-criticized stories won awards.

Julia Cameron in her book The Writer’s Life says, “I have seen more good writing destroyed by bad criticism than I have ever seen bad writing helped by good criticism.”

Anyone who’s ever had the best from a writing group – support, companionship, and encouragement – may not understand the damage a bad group wreaks. Anyone who joins a group needs to proceed cautiously and remember the words of E.B. White A writer’s courage can easily fail him…I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all.

I agree writing does take courage but sharing it takes even more. How do you avoid feeling stranded at the edge of the world with your work? Do you share with a group or only let a few select readers have a look?

***

Illustration by Harmsen Van der Beek