electric mist

reading & critiquing

The last couple of days I've spent my spare time reading a friend's novel and giving her a fine / line edit; she has to turn it into her agent on Tuesday. It's the second book in a two-book deal, which is great. It's not the kind of book I could (or would) write, which is always a challenge when I'm reading and critiquing someone else's work, because she's a fine writer, truly riveting, and the goal is to remember what her objectives are rather than my own way of doing things.

I've been through critiques of my work where people truly had it in their head that they were going to look at my work with my goals in place of their own, and they worked hard to give me feedback and ask me questions which would help me achieve that goal. It's amazing how that sort of critique can bring clarity to what I want to do, can solidify what I believe (even when others disagree) and can help me realize what makes my writing mine. Finding readers like this is like finding your own personal gold mine, and you guard them and hoard them and keep them safe because they will make you a better writer far far faster than if you muddle through on your own.

Of course, I've also been through critiques which were just toxic by the time they were over, because they boiled down to what the other person would have done had they written the story, and how stupid I was for not having done it that way. Those, you learn to ignore. (And that sounds a lot simpler than it is, because they often hurt and give life to that nagging doubt that can sit on your shoulder and before you know it, that doubt has grown into a full-blown monster or, if it hadn't been beaten back before, grows from a monster to an all-out disaster that sucks you into its vortex and makes it impossible to write.) (To mix metaphors there a bit.)

Unfortunately, the really negative ones are usually the ones we remember most. One time in particular, a "friend" read a script of mine and proceeded to shred it to pieces. I not only didn't know how to write a story, I had told the wrong story for the characters, I had the wrong characters... oh, wait, no, by the time the critique was over, I didn't even know how to create characters, and if I completely rewrote it from top to bottom, I would have something amazing -- and he had a long list of suggestions of exactly how to change it. The minor glitch was, it was a romantic comedy and if I had made the changes he wanted, it would have been a thriller. (No, seriously, a thriller.) Of course, he capped the review off with a "but I love it, I love your work and you're a terrific writer!" Made me want to smack him. It was such a vicious critique, I was staggered. Finally, I showed the written critique to a couple of other friends who had read the same script and not only did they not agree, but they thought it was a particularly vicious and toxic critique as well. One person asked, "Are you sure this guy is your friend? Because I wouldn't even do this to an enemy."

It's sometimes hard to get past the negative feedback. I think writers can get 50 positive comments and one toxic negative one and our subconscious will focus on that negative comment. The real disaster happens when we start to subtly alter what we are writing (or editing what we had written) in order to silence that one negative voice. I used to think that I was the only one who had that tendency until I talked to another friend who'd had several movies produced. He said he felt like that one negatvie comment would sear into his brain and he had to do something to fix it, like a kid who wanted to please the toughest parent, and he finally learned to stop when he realized that the process was destroying everything he'd written... that he might make that one negative critic happy (but very likely not, because once someone has made up their mind they don't love something, can you ever really convince them that they do?)... and meanwhile, he would have destroyed what the other readers had loved. What do you gain if you make one person like something and the rest who had liked it... hate it? "Why," he asked me, "do we put a lot more emphasis on or weight or importance to the negative comments than we do the positive ones?"

Insecurity, probably. How does a writer have the gravitas to create a whole world out of our own imagination and concoct a story that we think people would not only want to read, but pay to read or see, in the case of a movie? You have to have a pretty big ego to believe you can accomplish that feat, and at the same time, you're human and you know you're flawed and you know you make mistakes and are just plain old wrong about some things (and it's your job as a writer to examine just those kinds of flaws), so you end up questioning yourself far more than, say, an accountant questions her own work.

I think, though, that having written for years and lived through the ups and downs of good and bad critiques did something to weather me as a writer, and I'm much happier in the place I am in now. There's a desire (always, still) to have a good reader and get feedback and improve the work -- that will never change. What has changed is that the number of people I give the writing to for a critique has decreased significantly. There are a couple of people I hand the writing to knowing that they will focus on characters, others will focus on plot, others will focus on language. They each have their sort of specialty and they have proven kind and constructive in the past, not afraid to tell me the truth but having no desire to do any damage, either. I think, too, one other important thing has changed -- probably the most important, and that is that I trust my instincts about what works. What I can do, how I do it, and why that's different from what anyone else can do. I don't want to write a novel that others don't have objections to; I want to write a novel which has its own unique flavor and take on the world which resonates with readers. It certainly won't be every reader, and it may not even appeal to a lot of readers, but I think I have the gravitas now to believe I can do that, and do it my way. Otherwise... why bother?

Posted by toni at June 4, 2004 12:49 PM