“Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.” – Neil Gaiman
Until recent months I’ve resisted the idea of a structured critique group. Maybe resistance occurs when I confuse taking criticism with doing whatever the critic suggests. Maybe it occurs when my defenses go up. Participation in a couple of critique groups lately is improving my writing and changing my attitude. In my current exploration of platitudes (stay present, never give up, write what you know), the one that jumps out for me today is, “Believe in yourself.” Does this mean to ignore the critics, confident that your work is already the best you can make it? Or does it mean to stay open to critique, confident that you can always make your work better? With a reasonable degree of self-belief, you can stay vulnerable without being damaged. You can hear feedback while continuing to own your life and work. Writing is communication. Between the extremes of keeping a personal journal (with no readers) and writing to formula (revealing nothing of the writer), writing requires that both writer and reader be present. As Neil Gaiman suggests, writers need both to hear what isn’t working for a reader and to retain personal responsibility for deciding what to do about it.
10 Comments
Lisa Imhoff
11/1/2016 09:35:03 am
Sarah, thank you so much for again respecting your reader! By extension, it's also a dilemma for a careful reader when we are troubled by something in someone else's writing, when we as reader are involved with the writing because we're a co-worker on a project as I am, or via a critique group of sorts, which I am also in another compartment of my life. As a creative, sometimes we want to put something in, so we do, but then sometimes we aren't sure how to REALLY carry that off, so we don't complete the polishing off of that new story line or product to help it flow/work, and choose instead to ignore it for the time being and ... revisit it later. But we may NOT revisit it, until some kind observer (the reader or client) points it out as unfinished or unclear. Another time it comes up for me is when the creative (my client and I) is just too close to the product to realize that most of the observers (readers, buyers) lack the background or back story for the product (novel, article, catalog) to be really coherent or complete in its intention. Love Gaiman's quote which I'll print and tape to my monitor.
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Lisa, very well put. It's great if a reader points out something I'd intended to revisit but forgot. For the reader side, or in certain kinds of editorial work, there's a big gray area between right/wrong and matters of taste. (And even within some allegedly right/wrong areas. Yes, real writers do use sentence fragments or start sentences with conjunctions, to good effect.) I find it challenging to edit others' work that isn't wrong but isn't the way I would have said it.
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Lisa Imhoff
11/1/2016 03:11:25 pm
Well, Sarah, the kind of questions you might ask are a little different than the questions I generally ask. I'm mainly concerned with the visual appeal and how I can direct the reader/buyer to the best conclusion (this is the right or wrong product for your needs). But in general, beyond "right/wrong," and "matters of taste," we're all trying to "sell" something, right? To convince the viewer/reader that our story is valid (product is just what they need), worth the investment of time to read and understand (buy the product or renew the subscription to my client's newsletter).
Lisa Imhoff
11/1/2016 03:23:57 pm
PS. Yes, "helpful to specify the kind and degree of feedback we're looking for," and that boils down to intention. What is our intention for doing the writing, and what is our intention for asking for input on said writing. Someone may say, All those commas interfered with the flow or rhythm. Then, if you trust the sophistication of the reader, you would say, Oh, I didn't INTEND that, or Oh, that's just what I INTENDED all those commas to do! So a good critiquer can point out unintended consequences of something you may not have really been looking for comments about. So don't always discard comments on your periodic non-standard punctuation.
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Lisa Imhoff
11/1/2016 06:16:40 pm
Yes, in the sense that to sell means to promote or persuade, yes, any artist (creative) is trying to do that. They may not always know what they are trying to promote, I think, and the viewer/reader can perceive something entirely different than what was intended, depending on what they bring to the table.
I love to compare experiences of creative endeavor across different artistic media (writing, graphic arts, etc.).
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Lisa Imhoff
11/2/2016 09:31:04 am
I do too love to compare the creative process across media! A well-known illustrator once told me (when I was bemoaning to her that my livelihood was commercial art, as opposed to fine art) that all creatives have a client... Fine artists as well as commercial... Outside of doodling (for me) and journaling (for you and me both), that's true. I made a decision a few years later to turn my commercial art into fine art (meaning, really, to approach it differently, not simply to make it more esoteric), and it made all the difference in my approach to my projects.
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Lisa Imhoff
11/2/2016 11:01:13 am
"I agree with him that "they are almost always wrong" but don't take that to mean he objects to their suggestions, just that he probably won't follow them."
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AuthorI'm a historian who writes novels and literary nonfiction. My home base is Madison, Wisconsin.
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