[Here’s a follow up to the original question from Barbara, no longer anonymous…]
P.S. I have read a good deal of your speculative fiction and was excited, moved and intrigued. I want you to know that I have read sf, horror and fantasy since I was a child, and I did not mean to imply in any way that science fiction is lesser fiction.
Barbara Sanchez
Gosh, no, I didn’t take it that way at all, and I hope my answer didn’t sound as though I did. I thought you were asking what we call in our house a “real question,” meaning one with no implied judgment or agenda. If I’d thought you were being snarky about science fiction, I would probably have answered very differently (smile), and you wouldn’t have got to see any work in progress, for sure.
It’s interesting putting up work that isn’t “finished”… A few years ago, I wouldn’t have: too much pride. That’s been pretty much hammered out of me (well, okay, not completely) by the screenwriting process, in which total strangers read work that I do in days and treat it exactly the same as work done in weeks or months. No quarter given. A real learning experience in very many ways.
When I was a beginning writer, I wanted everyone to love everything I did, because if they loved it, it must be good. And so the response became what I worked for, which is backwards and bullshit, but I didn’t have anyone to tell me that the point is to do the work so well, with such skill and focus and intention, that it will speak clearly to those who read it. And then they can judge for themselves whether it’s good for them or not.
The best thing a new writer can learn to do is open wide and take the criticism in. Learn to listen through the embarrassment, the anger and the defensiveness. Try to hear beyond what people say (because sometimes it’s badly expressed, or focused in the wrong place) and work instead to understand what they mean. Suffer and rage and bang your head against it long enough to finally learn a) how to write better and b) how to filter good criticism from crap criticism (because not everyone can actually help you make your work better, and some criticism really is crap).
Genuine, thought-out criticism is a gift, even when I decide that it’s not for me. It’s hard in this culture to criticize someone’s work. Criticism basically says that the artist has failed to achieve her goals (or to achieve the goals of the person offering the criticism, which may or may not be something I need to listen to…), and we don’t like hurting people’s feelings with the word failure. I have found this to be true even in Hollywood, where I had expected criticism delivered with little attention to the niceties… instead, I’ve found people being so careful of my feelings that I’ve started being explicit about the fact that I don’t take their comments personally unless they become personal. I will say, You can hurt my feelings by telling me I’m a crap writer. You won’t hurt my feelings by telling me that something in the script isn’t working for you.
Of course, sometimes that’s a lie. Every once in a while, I do get my feelings hurt or I do get pissed off. I do it in private and keep it to myself. Becoming defensive just doesn’t move things forward…
I am not a new writer by any stretch, but I’ve been a new screenwriter for a couple of years now, and have been crawling through this particular mud again, and so I’m very glad that I have already learned some of these lessons in fiction, where there aren’t so many people stirring the pot. If I’d gone through this screenplay thing for the first time in my 20’s, I probably would have run screaming. Now I just hang up the phone, give the entire state of California the finger if I need to, and get back to work.
And (trying now to return to some semblance of connection to the topic at hand) that’s why it’s okay now to share more of myself and my fiction at a less-than-seamless stage. I wouldn’t do it for something I was actively working on right now — but this is more a maybe-someday work, and I find that acknowledging its flaws doesn’t make me feel any less like a real writer. In fact, it makes me feel more like one.
Kelley, thanks for writing about dealing with criticism. It helps remember that criticism is a gift, even though it’s a tough one to give and receive. I’ve been thinking about this as cultivating permeability – writers who are impermeable don’t get hurt by criticism, but they can’t change, either. Just another way to say “stay open.”
Hi Sarah, nice to see you here.
Permeability is a good word… it implies controlled access, which is the real trick, I think. We don’t really teach our kids in this culture how to accept criticism, how to understand on a gut level that you did this incorrectly, or inadequately, or incompletely does not mean you are a failed human being with no hope of ever being successful, respected, or loved in the world, and any second now a dog will come along and pee on you…. And so people grow up responding to criticism as if it were the second statement, not the first. No wonder people get defensive.
I grew up internalizing this idea of criticism too, and it made it horribly hard for me to hear criticism for years as an adult. I would listen, because I knew that I was supposed to, but I would walk away feeling lower than a worm’s belly.
But at some point early in the screenwriting process, I just metaphorically threw open my arms and invited the dogs of Hollywood to come pee on me. And that’s exactly what it felt like for a while — but by god I learned a lot, and now instead of feeling sick and inadequate when I hear feedback, I feel excited about the chance to make the script better, or I shrug my shoulders because the feedback isn’t constructive or useful. It happens. It’s nice to finally know the difference.