Criticism: A Tale of Two Writer Types

In writing groups, there seem to be two kinds of writers when it comes to criticism of their work. Both shoot themselves in the foot (feet?) without realizing it.

Type 1: No, no, no.

This writer spends all his time telling you that your suggestions are impractical, impossible, and artistically wrong. There is already an example of this in Feedback Defensiveness, but I think the phenomenon bears repeating.

You:	Fred, I was really liked your premise. However, would people adapt quite so quickly—
Fred:	Well, how long should it take?
You:	I don’t know, but a clearer indication of the timeline—
Fred:	The vagueness is intentional—it will all make sense eventually.
You:	But if the reader can’t situate himself—
Fred:	Well, no, you can’t. I have more faith in my readers.

Might as well have spared your breath. Not only did Fred fend off any feedback but handed you an insult as a bonus.

Fred wins the battle and loses the war by turning the feedback session into a combat zone. He leaves with his manuscript unaltered and may even have the mistaken impression that, by fending off all criticism, his piece is closing in on perfection.

Yet I have a sneaking sympathy for Fred. You have to believe in yourself and your writing. Otherwise, why would you keep going?

And, let’s face it, there is usually a variety of levels of experience and talent in any writing group. Some give great on-point feedback and others can’t distinguish between how they would write your piece and helping it be the best it can be.

I get why Fred might be defensive but it’s not an effective way to improve his or your work. But there is another more insidious way to prevent progress.

Type 2: I agree with all your criticism

This writer usually takes copious notes in a feedback session. When anyone suggests a change (Didn’t buy the motivation; the flashback was too long; don’t have the protagonist tell the story), Sheila writes ‘change motivation,’ ‘shorten flashback’, ‘lose story frame.’

This writer seems the perfect antidote to Fred. Tries to benefit from all the feedback. But her approach is also ineffective in the longer term. Here’s why:

You get different points of view, which of course is why you’re in a writing group. But one piece of feedback might be, ‘I found Melissa cold and distant,” while another says, “Oh, no, she reminds me of my aunt Zebby—we all loved her.” So, cold and distant or warm and loving? When Sheila tries to fix her piece, she doesn’t know which feedback to choose.
You are allowing others to shape your voice. While Fred’s belief in his writing is getting in the way, so is Sheila’s willingness to treat all feedback as equally applicable. With this approach, you run the danger of establishing a voice which is a composite of your writing group rather than one which is uniquely yours.
Feedback can be idiosyncratic. Perhaps the group member liked Melissa because you put her in a blue dress which was Aunt Zebby’s favorite color. Which is not to say that the feedback of Melissa being cold and distant is right, either, since it may also be an idiosyncratic response.

So, where are you? There is a way to receive criticism which would work for both Fred and Sheila. Next post.

December 30, 2022December 30, 2022

Do I Want to Drag up the Past if I Write My Memoirs?

I get it, I do. Do you really want to drag up your awful past? I went through the same struggle when I was working with my writing teacher, Barbara Turner-Vesselago. She encouraged me to turn my semi-autobiographical writing into a novel. This is how I recollected it, looking back on that time:

I walked up the steep hill at Kimbercote. I remember climbing the hill, the reluctance as strong as my panting. I wasn’t sure there was enough there because mostly what I had was a feeling of a vast and terrifying darkness. Unrelieved abyss from which, on entry, one might never return. I remember the dread of willingly consigning myself to years back in the hell from which, I thought, I had escaped. But so strong was my wish to write that I ventured in. And found, to my growing delight, that it was not entirely a place of shadow and terror. That is was also a place of light and laughter. That in the wish to escape the night, I had forgotten the day.

And also, in a bastardization of Shakespeare (since I can’t remember the exact quote and in addition, it’s about jealousy), as I say, in a bastardization of Shakespeare—that the remembering fed upon itself and I remembered more and more.

So, in the long run, it was a gift. It gave me back who I was. Not all darkness, not all light. But me.

I think that you might find the same—that your past is more nuanced than you might think.

Remembering the good things of the past

So your past isn’t all dark, no matter how you might feel at the moment. Going back lets you remember the kind neighbor who always had a sympathetic ear and a cookie for you. Or the feeling of safety leaning into the soft leather of the policeman’s jacket. Or the teacher who gave you extra art lessons after class. The kindness of strangers and acquaintances is kindness nevertheless and worth remembering.

Even better, it allows you to recall the bright, warm, and touching moments that made you love the people you think so poorly of in the present. It fills out the picture which might have gotten telescoped into a caricature without gray tones.

Remembering the hard past

As a mature adult, you can look back on a scary or sad incident and provide the context that your younger self was incapable of. That Dad’s temper was more about mental illness than anything you did, no matter what you thought at the time (and might be lingering into the present). That Mother’s lack of care was not because you were unlovable but because of her alcoholism.

Something happens when you give yourself the space, time, and permission to revisit in detail incidents from your past. It opens up closed spaces or even ones you had forgotten were there. It makes writing a memoir worth it even if no one ever sees it except you.

This is not about forgetting, down-playing or even forgiving. You need to remember accurately and whether or not you forgive the people is an entirely different issue. This is about capturing who you were and looking at the hard times from a long enough distance to get a perspective.

For more on this, read Susan Shapiro’s interesting article, Make Me Worry You’re Not O.K.

December 23, 2022December 16, 2022

Won’t I Hurt People If I Write a Memoir?

Some people are prevented from writing what they really feel about events or people in their lives (i.e. their memoir) by the fear they will hurt people they care about in doing so.

The difference between hurt and interpretation

In my semi-autobiographical novel, Kimono Spring, this is how I depicted my sister:

When we got home, Mommy cleared the pepper and salt and napkin holder off the kitchen table. She brought out the package she had gotten at Ogilvy’s.

Diane held the paper bag the package had been in. “Go away,” she said, turning to me.

“Won’t!”

“You’d better!”

“Oh yeah, says who?” I said bravely.

She took a step towards me and I backed up involuntarily. “Says me,” and she stepped even closer.

“Enough,” said Mommy in a tired voice. “Julie can see, too.”

“But it’s mine.”

Mommy folded back the tissue. “It’s just looking, Diane. It doesn’t matter.”

I bustled past a molten Diane and pushed myself right against the table, just to show her.

I depict my sister as overweening, superior and mean. Obviously, she would not agree with that interpretation. But I wrote the novel from the point of view of a seven-year-old, dealing with her ten-year-old sister. As an adult, even I might agree that the portrait is very black and white but that is how a seven-year-old would see the world and therefore, the people in it.

What you write is always going to be from your view. How can it be otherwise? You’re not trying to write your life story from someone else’s perspective.

And anyhow, unless your memoir is populated with saints—never angry, vindictive, destructive or sly (boring memoir, by the way)—nobody will agree with your characterization of themselves. Despite your efforts to be honest and even-handed, you’ll still get I never said that. You started it, not me. My son is not a bully. I don’t have a big nose. Etc.

So what others might read as hurtful you may see as interpretation of what happened.

How to deal with the fear of inflicting hurt

Still, you don’t set out to hurt people in writing a memoir. But writing with this fear in mind will restrict what you record even if you’re not aware of it. Unconsciously, you might gloss over an important event because it puts your mother in a bad light. Or soften the impact of an action by your brother so that its hurt doesn’t look as if it stung as much as it did.

The answer?

Write it as if no one will ever read it. As if it is a very extensive diary. Not meant for anyone but you. That way, you can tell your truth and not somebody else’s or worse, how you think they want you to think/believe.

When you’ve got the whole thing, revisit the issue. You may be surprised that over the course of the entire work, your depiction is more generous or even-handed than you had thought, even when writing it. But it is a question to pose once you’ve recorded what you want to say—not before.

I’ll do a post sometime on how to handle reactions when you do release your memoir to a larger audience than your computer.

December 16, 2022December 16, 2022

Finding Your Distinctive Voice

In the previous post, What is a Writer’s Voice, I listed some characteristics of a writer’s voice. Your voice is you on the page and can be comprised of what you like to write about, type of characters you favor, style of writing, settings you use, etc. Every writer needs his or her distinctive voice. As Kurt Vonnegut pointed out in A Man Without a Country, that there are only a few basic stories in literature which keep being repeated (boy meets girl, etc.). It is the distinctive spin you put on that retelling which makes the narrative worth reading.

How do I develop a voice?

Not by sitting down and deciding what it is. Right, I’ll just fill in the categories or I will write about high powered people in urban settings. A voice developed this way would be as mechanical as the method used to generate it. It is not an analytic or reductive exercise. Voice, once developed, is as distinctive as it is hard to describe. You can’t point a finger to where it resides in a work, yet it infuses everything.

The way to develop your voice is to write. Write and write and write. Launch many expendable pieces, as urged by William Stafford. You of course don’t have to stick with one setting, one type of character, one type of plot—in fact, you shouldn’t. Experiment with different settings, structures, characters, persons (first, third, etc.). You try writing about your old home town, or your grandfather’s day, or the latest intrigue at the office, or a fantasy of what you would like life to be. Each story helps you to both get more comfortable with the craft of writing but also helps you to define you as a writer, to allow you to sink into that space which is the magic of writing. Take the time and space to find out what is unique about your writing.

Getting feedback

The type of feedback you get and from whom is always important but it is especially critical as you are finding your voice. When you are in the midst of experimenting, you don’t need someone harping on your overuse of similes. Because a lot of similes may be part of your voice. That kind of criticism early on might make you think you should cut back when your voice may not be stable enough to know for sure.

Seeking feedback which is highly technical or specific may not be right for you as you are starting out. Instead, you are looking for readers who can tell you what they like best about what you have written.

Do I need to put everything on hold until I have a distinctive voice?

Of course not. It’s an organic thing and will develop as you do as a writer. In fact, your voice may shift somewhat over your writing career. And that’s fine. It’s not a stable state any more than it is fully definable.

The key as always, is to write, write, write. Magic, magic, magic.

November 4, 2022November 4, 2022

Emotional Truth in Your Writing

What is emotional truth?

I know you have experienced it—otherwise, you wouldn’t want to be a writer. You know it when you’re reading a novel which is, by definition, fiction, made up, untrue. And yet, you feel its truth, its emotional truth. It touched something in you which was real. Mike Ruso, a writer and photographer, has some interesting insights if you want to explore more of its definition, but I’d like to focus on, not what it feels like to experience it, but how to create it.

What is emotional truth for writers?

It’s one thing to experience this honesty as a reader, but how does it feel when you are writing that way? The best I can do it is to describe my struggles as I journaled about them.

I feel like I am not getting down to the core—the place from which I write—the deep place. It feels very at the surface, perhaps because I was thinking of the characters as vehicles for the essays[1]. Now I want to think of them as existing on their own, without reference to anything else.

So, where is that deep spot in the middle of my chest from which all else flows? It doesn’t feel like I have accessed that for a long time and it is this that I think is lacking in David[2]. That one true thing. Which is more than one true thing but it is about true things. It is a sinking down to allow a bubbling up. Who is David?

The fantastical, illogical, and moving side of my brain has not gotten much exercise lately. To wit: none. And I fear it is atrophying due to lack of use. What I continually fear.

Although maybe because it hasn’t been used for a while, it’s like the muscles in the front of my shoulder. Because I was hunched forward for so long, they went unused. Now that I am straighter, they are called upon to function and are remarkably weak. Who knew. So now, the movements I can make with them are limited and painful. But I am making progress.

I hope the same can be said of this thing which I seek.

Not a definition, I know, but perhaps approximating how to know, as a writer, when you are writing from a place from which emotional truth can arise.

How do I get it in my writing?

Ah, the $64,000 question. It is the pinnacle of writing, which all writers strive to reach. It is what makes writing magic.

I have a simple but not easy answer: honesty.

When I think I have approached emotional truth in my writing, it is when I have been completely honest. I think it is the willingness to show up naked on the page, to bring your scared and trembling self to the writing, not hiding behind technique or elegant writing. It is writing about feeling unattractive and unloved rather than about heroines who are beautiful and worshiped. It is the willingness to go to the places in yourself which are raw and writing from there.

There is no paint-by-numbers method. Push yourself to be honest with yourself, to be honest on the page. And then, every once in a while, emotional truth breaks through. And every once in a while, so does the magic.

[1] Referring to Cross My Heart and Other Tales of Life and Art, soon to be released.

[2] Referring to hero in the Honest One, a novel on the consequences of stealing ideas