Putting The Critics In Their Place
- Posted by Essays Blog in Essays Blog |
- February 4th, 2009 |
- Comments
I once read that if you were a writer, it wasn’t enough to just compose. “You must publish what you compose” was the given advice. I believe that’s accurate and it’s great advice. But when you do that, you have to know at least III things are going to happen: 1.) Individual will like your writing. 2.) Individual will dislike your writing. 3.) Individual won’t care! If you allow all these reactions to make or break you, you’ll be on an endless emotional roller coaster ride. You can smooth the peaks and valleys, tho’, if you ask yourself a few questions.
Who is Expression it?
You may have heard the expression “consider the author”. That’s important when you’re weighing any commentary on your activity. In the case of teachers, editors or book reviewers, you deprivation to be confident that the person is truly objective and knows what they’re doing. If you’re careful of them, you can accept what they have, good and bad, and learn from them. These aren’t people out to destroy you (unremarkably!), so don’t administer the messenger.
Once people in the real class start buying and reading your activity, you’ll definitely hear about who loved it and who hated it. But pay close attention because thither’s more thereto than a love-hate relationship. My first novel was packaged in much a artifact that it looked like an urban romance when in fact it is a complex family drama. I knew people who picked up the book expecting a light romance would be painfully disappointed–and that’s exactly what happened when my novel was featured in a book-of-the-month club that differentiated in selling urban romance. Many of their customers who bought my book hated it!
What Are They Expression?
If I had appropriated their criticism at face duration, I would have felt like a failure. But all of the reader comments I saw on the club’s site: “Also adagio, boring, not enough se*x” told me they were expecting a different kind of book–and I didn’t blame them! I would have been miffed also if I had expected “Depression of the Dolls” and ended up reading “Action and Peace”! These readers were not in my aim market, so the comments didn’t upset me.
Readers in my aim market gave different feedback. Yes, they liked the book, but that wasn’t all: I could tell they had engaged with the book and had invested in the characters. Even comments about how frustrated they got with the main character were good because it meant they cared enough to be frustrated. If these readers had found the book adagio and boring, I would have known for certain I had a problem.
Is it Consistent with What You Know of Your Activity?
As a writer, you must know your own activity advantageously enough to help you decide what criticism makes meaning and what doesn’t. I’ve said before that I believe most writers know in their heart when something is wrong or if they’re having problems with their material. If you know writing dialogue is difficult for you, thither’s no reason to be hurt or amazed when individual says your dialogue is anemic or unbelieveable. So do an open and honest evaluation of what the reader and/or critic is expression. So you can…
Make a Decision: What Will You Do?
No matter where your feedback is coming from, it will always be your decision whether or not you do anything with it. Sometimes feedback will open up new ideas and you’re happy to rewrite based on those comments because you know the activity will be better. Sometimes the book is already out thither, and the feedback can only make you entertain what you’ll do differently next time. Or maybe you won’t make a change at all. Thither’s a particular environment in my novel that’s so cleanse opera-ish it’s almost ridiculous. But I knew that when I wrote it and I craved it to be that artifact because I craved to appear how love can make people do crazy things. I wasn’t going to change it.
But if I hadn’t been clear on my intentions for the environment, I would have felt horrible everytime it was brought up in a book group’s discussion. It was easier for me to stand for my writing because I had been clear about what I was doing. So, for the sake of your writer’s heart, be clear–all the better to accompany your artifact finished to a better book.