Are You A Writer?

Can you accept imperfection?

Can you accept that you'll need to revise again and again (and still again), that the word you're looking for may not appear until the twentieth or thirtieth draft? 

Can you accept that one day your writing will flow like wine and the next day the well may run dry and all you can do is sit at your desk and stare for hours at an empty screen?

Can you accept that one scene on a given day may work beautifully but adding another scene on the following day may make the previous scene unnecessary?

Can you accept that the purpose of your first draft is to lead you to your second draft and the purpose of the second draft is to lead you to your third, on and on until the story comes together?

Can you live for days or months or years with failure (which is what others will call your efforts if you don't publish your work) and accept that those---who see not publishing as failure---fail themselves to understand writing as an ongoing process?

Can you accept the unexpected mountains that you'll have to climb and the unanticipated twists and turns in the road and enjoy the journey for its own sake, not for where the road might take you but for the pure pleasure of being on the road?

Can you accept that you'll find others on the road who will try to discourage you from continuing on your journey (and yet you still keep writing)?

Can you hold fast to your own belief in yourself?

Can you steer through darkness by the solitary flame of hope that burns in your heart?

Can you find joy in writing with or without financial gain or reward or recognition?

Can you keep writing so that at the end of your journey, when you no longer have the strength to lift a pen but still feel the desire to write, you can say you gave your best?

Then, perhaps, you are a writer. 

Learning to Accept Criticism

Learning to accept criticism is a part of our job as writers—perhaps one of the hardest parts of the job—but few of us are comfortable hearing criticism of our work and often misinterpret it.

Rather than accepting as a gift the heartfelt comments of a reader who may point out serious or not-so-serious problems in a narrative, we often bristle and choose to dismiss the comments as irrelevant or, worse, hoping against hope that the reader misread a passage or a chapter or the entire work.

All of us who write know it’s hard to listen to criticism, even in the form of general observations.  We are as close to the manuscript under review as we are to our own skin. All of the words, the images, the scenes and sentences and pages that have added up over weeks and months are part of our psyche. They’ve emerged from our pens and computer keyboards with painstaking effort, a daily outpouring of sweat and blood and tears. That’s why it’s difficult, if not impossible, for us to view our own work in a neutral, unbiased way.

But, as most writers come to realize, it’s in our best interest, and in the best interest of our story, to listen to criticism rather than ignore it.  Whether accurate or inaccurate, critical observations are a helpful way for us to gauge the true shape of our story. Any criticism offers insights because it helps us better evaluate how a reader responds to our work.

Criticism is actually another tool in our toolbox. It’s like a magnifying glass that can identify and enlarge a manuscript’s strengths and weaknesses so that we can see what we have done more clearly, and then revise accordingly.  

Listening closely to one reader’s opinion of the story gives us a rare opportunity to measure our expectations for the story against the expectations of a reader that were or were not satisfied.

A reader’s comments can help us pinpoint whether the character evokes—or fails to evoke—a response, if the plot slows to a crawl or races over an important part of the story. These kinds of comments can help us recalibrate our aim so that the next time we shoot an arrow into the air its arc is more likely to hit the bull’s eye.

Listening to criticism—and accepting it—isn’t easy for most of us. But the more that we write and share our work, the more essential a tool it becomes to measure progress on our manuscripts, to gauge where we think we are and where we really are.

If we want to write, we must learn to accept criticism without letting it throw us off balance. Our readers are trying to help us, and, rather than interpret their comments as attempts to derail us, we might thank them for offering us a way to stay focused and on track.

In the end, we may find criticism helps us discover the key to our story in a place where we least expected to uncover it, so we can tell the story that we’d hoped to tell when we first started writing it.

For more on listening to and accepting criticism, visit:

http://www.christophergronlund.com/blog/tjw/2009/10/13/5-ways-to-handle-criticism/

http://www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2012/feb/09/reasons-tips-criticism-arts

http://surlymuse.com/writing-criticism-and-how-to-take-it-gracefully/

http://menwithpens.ca/writing-criticism/

http://tinybuddha.com/blog/how-to-deal-with-criticism-well-25-reasons-to-embrace-it/

Staying the Course

Showing your work to other people and asking for their opinion of its quality can easily throw you off course.

Feedback, no matter how positive, can make you feel like you’re being buffeted by waves. One moment you can rise to the peak of a wave, elated and thrilled with a reader’s praise, the next moment you can sink to the bottom, distraught and discouraged by a reader’s criticism.

It’s especially challenging to know where you stand and what you’ve accomplished when the person evaluating your story is an editor or producer with the power to reject your work or cancel the show.

In Susan Orlean’s Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend, you can see just what a writer has to face at times when proposing a new work, whether it’s a novel or script for a movie or TV drama.

And you can begin to understand why a writer, hoping to stay the course of a project, needs such large amounts of determination and faith in her own skills as a writer.

It’s an issue of trust: when do you trust another reader and when do you withhold your trust?

The following excerpts from Rin Tin Tin (pp 187-188) may help you view your own work and your relationship with certain readers in a new light: 

The executives at Screen Gems, the television arm of Columbia Pictures, loved the proposal and told Bert they wanted twenty-six episodes as soon as possible. They expected to syndicate the show—that is, to sell it to individual stations rather than to a national network… 

Bert and screenwriter Douglas Heyes wrote four scripts and sent them to Screen Gems. The executives were not pleased. “They said, we’ve read your scripts and we, collectively, think they stink,” Bert recalled. “And I said, Yeah? Obviously I don’t agree. And they said, What are these, morality plays? And I said, I don’t know what you’re planning on making, but that’s what I’m making. They said I was wrong, and I said, I don’t think I’m wrong—it’s got action, it’s got people, it’s got the dog, and that’s what it should be. And they said, You’re going to go against our seven combined years of experience? And I said, Yeah, if I listen to you and I fail I’ve learned nothing. If I go my way, I learn something. I’m the best fucking production manager in the business—you think I need you guys? Forget the contract—I’m out the door. 

The executives called his uncle, Nate Spingold, the head of Columbia Pictures, to tell him they thought Bert was crazy and that Spingold needed to straighten him out. “Nate said, Send me the scripts, let me have a look,” Bert recalled. “Nate reads them and says, These are brilliant, you Screen Gems guys are crazy. And that was the end of the discussion. That was the last bullshit I ever heard, but from that point on those Screen Gems guys hated me. 

So, how do you know if your work is worthwhile? Who do you turn to for an evaluation? Do you turn to anyone or do you trust your own heart to tell you when you should stay the course?

For more info on staying the course, check out:
http://www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watching/aaron-sorkin-faces-the-newsroom-critics-at-press-tour
http://www.susansly.com/staying-the-course-in-the-face-of-criticism/
http://www.positivityblog.com/index.php/2011/09/01/criticism/
http://49writers.blogspot.com/2012/06/deb-inspiration-and-staying-course.html
http://zenhabits.net/how-to-accept-criticism-with-grace-and-appreciation/

And if you want to learn more about Susan Orlean's work, visit: 
http://susanorlean.com

Insights Into Criticism

Over the holidays, I found myself leafing through a favorite book on my shelves--The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor, selected and edited by Sally Fitzgerald--and came across these words which I thought I'd share with you to begin the year:

"No matter how just the criticism, any criticism at all which depresses you to the extent that you feel you cannot ever write anything worth anything is from the Devil and to subject yourself to it is for you an occasion of sin. In you, the talent is there and you are expected to use it. Whether the work itself is completely successful, or whether you ever get any worldly success out of it, is a matter of no concern to you. It is like the Japanese swordsmen who are indifferent to getting slain in the duel...

"The human comes before art. You do not write the best you can for the sake of art but for the sake of returning your talent increased to the invisible God to use or not use as he sees fit. Resignation to the will of God does not mean that you stop resisting evil or obstacles, it means that you leave the outcome out of your personal considerations. It is the most concern coupled with the least concern." (p. 419)

O'Connor's comments about criticism are valid whether the criticism is offered by well-meaning workshop colleagues, teachers, editors, or friends.

And I suspect her advice has equal validity when you're being too self-critical on yourself.

Any criticism "which depresses you" is counter-productive, and something to watch for (and avoid) in the year ahead.

So, as you embark on this new year of writing, try to remember O'Connor's advice to "leave the outcome out of your personal considerations" and just write.

Hope this helps as you enter the water and begin swimming again.

For more on Flannery O'Connor and her work, visit:
http://mediaspecialist.org/ssinnocents.html
http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/books/08/20/flannery.oconnor.biography/index.html
http://online.worldmag.com/2007/09/28/interview-with-flannery-oconnor/
http://kirjasto.sci.fi/flannery.htm