Tag: critiques

Machete Meet Jungle

Easy to get lost in here. Chrissy, bring me the big knife!

When I’ve completed a draft of a manuscript, I have to get away from it for a while. Sometimes it’s a week, sometimes it’s a little more. During that time I’ll begin work on something else or pick up another manuscript that needs some attention.

I like to sit down with a red pencil and a paper copy, but that’s not always possible.

See, when I’m on the computer I have had a hard time in the past (and especially lately) getting distracted by the Internet. I refuse to buy software that I can turn on and off if I really want to be distracted. Doesn’t make any sense to install something I won’t use and can work around. All my writing, and editing, is about rhythm and desire. Forgive the digression.

Am I ready to dive in? How much do I want this? Everything depends on the day job and its requirements of me and what’s going on with my family. I haven’t hit the lottery yet and I’m not daring enough to take the plunge on being a full-time writer. I need to make house payments and eat.

So really, the first step is getting into the proper headspace to pull out the blade and begin excising the cancerous words and phrases, marking the bits for improvement or deletion.

Then comes the cutting.

Stuff has to go, stuff has to be reworked. Things have to change.

Thank goodness it’s not all plot stuff any more. The last year has been spent mired in learning about passive voice and how awful it is. The ability to recognize it escaped me for so long that plowing through the novel to reshape those bits was daunting. I took several weeks off while doing that because I couldn’t believe how bad it was and how much I hated that I’d done it. Worse, I offered a couple of critiques where I pointed out passive voice that was obviously intentional in retrospect. I was so trapped in that mindset the crits were bad.

Learning experiences, I suppose.

But then my process for editing includes sending out the manuscript to others to read, if they have the time. Then waiting for notes back.

So I pick up something else that needs attention or I write blog posts (like this one) or I veg out in front of the TV. (Which I know isn’t good for me but sometimes I need to hear or see other people’s stories.)

And when the notes come back, it’s stepping onto square one and starting again. Wash, rinse, repeat as necessary.

In the end it’s good for me. I’m learning. Doing is learning as long as one isn’t repeating the same mistakes over and over. Spinning Wheels belong in songs, not in a writer’s process, right?

March 15, 2013
Ignorance is NOT Bliss

I don’t want you to be in the middle of the road, I want you to be on one side or the other.

I’m open to people reading my works and telling me exactly what they think. After all, I wouldn’t be sharing my writing if I didn’t want a reaction.

When I finished my novel in December of 2011, I was tired and proud. Nervous, too, because it was the longest sustained work I’d ever written. Nervous because the protagonist is female and I’m not and by daring to write her the way I did I’m opening myself up to criticism that I don’t know how women behave.

Worse, still, I was worried that I would be revealed to be a fraud as a writer, too. That my skill at turns of phrase and world-building and simple sentence construction were terrible, awful, and not deserving of anyone’s time to read was perhaps my biggest fear. (Run-on, overly complicated sentences notwithstanding.)

So I really, really thought hard about what I wanted from a critique of my work.

Honesty, more than anything else.

If my writing can’t elicit any kind of reaction from a reader, I don’t deserve to have my work read. It’s one thing to just spew words on a page or a screen and hope for the best but once a story is written, I want you to feel something. Anything. Revulsion is fine but in general not the reaction I write for. Sadness is better. Shock. Any kind of reaction. Happiness is best.

The best stories move the reader. If I can do that I’m better at this than I thought.

So when I get notes back from editors or first readers, that’s what I’m looking for.

Now, that said, I will read through the comments and then put them aside for a while. I’ve been infuriated at a couple of comments because it was obvious that the reader just didn’t get it. As recently as a couple of years ago I would be upset with the reader who told me what I didn’t want to hear. But since I’ve asked for honesty, I have to admit that if the reader didn’t get what I was going for it was because I didn’t do my job as a storyteller.

Dammit.

That meant I had more work ahead of me. It meant more time in a world I thought I was already beyond. It meant I didn’t know enough. It meant more revision, more re-writing, and more work.

In general, the feedback I’ve received has pushed me to become better, to tell the stories more clearly, to WRITE. But that dissatisfaction with my skills can overwhelm me and I will set aside a work that doesn’t fire back with the reaction I hoped for.

But worse, it’s no reaction at all that’s so discouraging.

I won’t go all knee-jerk and fire up inflammatory responses because that’s unprofessional. But what I say in the privacy of my own writing space… Well, let’s just say that I’ve been harder on myself than on anyone I’ve asked to read my stuff.

When it’s said and done, critiques are difficult for me but they spur me to work harder. What I have to avoid are the shortcuts that put me in the wrong place to start with.

You know, if I’m being honest about it.

March 8, 2013
I Hope You Like It… (Week of March 3)

The hardest part of a writer’s life is maybe, just maybe, is putting one’s work out for others to read and give feedback. There are some anxious, hand-wringing moments when a writer is sure that exposure as a fraud is imminent, when that trusted friend may come back and suggest that the writer give it up and keep the day job.

It’s not those comments that are the most worrisome, though. Perhaps the comments that say “it’s good but…” or “I liked it but…” are the hardest to take. ‘But’ is a deflating kind of word, isn’t it?

Well, our writers this week are going to tell us about handling critiques and rejections. They’ve got their coffee, the stage is lit and the mic is open. Pull up a chair here and our servers will be circulating, ready to take your orders.

March 3, 2013