Word After Word

If we listen to the praise for our work, and believe it to be true, than we must listen to the criticism, and take it to heart. And vice versa.  But what about conflicting feedback! One reader loves the

One of my writing students, a client-friend, Sam, sends me work every couple of weeks. Sam is brilliant, well-read, accomplished: a successful professional, a thoughtful engaged mother of five who writes from South Texas. She’s a crack writer. I was telling her during our phone conference how much I loved the way the patio functioned in the party scene, how alive and scary the patio stones were, how gorgeous the writing was. I thought it was amazing how she’d made the scene come to life. It had so much weirdness and pain and beauty thrumming under the surface. It was amazingly great writing.

“This feels good to hear,” Sam said. “But can I trust it? I’m not sure. My writing group had a lot of changes. Mostly criticism. I want to think it’s good. But how do I believe you?”

I laughed. This is what we do. It’s such a funny thing. We believe all complaints and instinctively mistrust praise.

I do this every single day: take all the criticisms as gospel. And I resist the praise—I don’t want to be hoodwinked! I think the praise-givers have no standards. I think the critics are crabby geniuses who have something I am missing. I doubt the praise, wholly. I don’t to want to be walking around mistakenly thinking I’m Miss Thing when I’m just another mediocre writer. For shame, for shame.

For example, my friend Bill recently told me my new prologue for the memoir didn’t shine. Didn’t shine!? I was devastated. I heard him saying Heather you do not shine and you never will.  It was horrible. And I believed him. I threw the pages out. I didn’t ever consider, “Can I trust his comments? How do I know they are true, right, useful, good?” I shoved the work overboard, was embarrassed of it. Then, yesterday, when he told me the new new new prologue did shine, I assumed he was just trying to be nice; he knew he’d hurt my feelings last week.

I didn’t trust the praise at all. I saw a hidden agenda.

Why do we “trust” criticism, give it more weight, than praise? Do we need a whole new relationship with Showing Our Work? 

Yes.

Very very much. 

First, we have to — Slow Down – showing our work. We’re getting one reader’s well-intentioned but probably limited reaction to a work in progress. People out there do kind of generally know what’s good writing, what isn’t. But no one knows as much about the work as we do.  We are better served to show it to ourselves first, and then clarify what we want out of the response we ask from others.

I tend to show too early, from a place of fear, in a child-like way, hoping an authority, some magical perfect fixer-knower person, will show us the Truth, what to do. I think I’m secretly asking for the work to be rescued when it isn’t even in trouble! No wonder I’m confused about conflicting messages (Give it life support! No, let it run around in the yard! No! add a monkey!). No wonder I do not know what to trust, how to proceed. I want the work to be rescued, it isn’t in trouble, I show it to someone and they try to fix it or they love it. Yipe! All wrong. I reject both responses, but I sure do feel the negatives and push away the positive praise….

Readers are like dragonflies. They zoom all over the piece, buzz buzz buzz. They might know helpful things. They might not. Most likely, we won’t be able to tell “the truth” in what they say—praise or criticism. It’s a reader, having a reaction. Bzzzzzzzz. Bzzzzzzz.

What can I meta-notice here?

For better or worse, there isn’t a Fixing Machine we can run our work through, an entity or energy that knows the Truth.  The fixing machine is the process of writing. It’s done alone.

I suspect I show my work as a child shows art—mostly I want a hug, a kiss, some treats, and more art supplies, permission to spend the afternoon continuing on this path, making. I want affirmation—you are a great artist, more fingerpaint! Don’t worry if you make a mess! I will clean it up for you! Enjoy! Have fun! I can’t wait to see what you do next! No surprise when a reader says exactly this to me I feel let down. It’s not enough, not adult enough, not complex enough.

The best readers I’ve had (Lorraine, Jackie, Annie-Turtle) articulate the place—the deep emotional place—the work has taken them to, and the point to the places, the actual words that launched them into very specific insights and reactions. They see patterns and show them to me. They see things the work is reaching towards, sending out tentacles to, and they name the things, enabling me to nurture those tentacles, grab on with them. They read into the work. They show me what it’s like to be them reading it. That alone is what I need. It isn’t praise or criticism. It’s as though they become the guy in the dictionary with the see-through layover pages, the plates that show circulatory system, nervous system, skeleton. They show me how it is for my work to be inside them, how its systems function when inside their particular humanness. They point to places where the workings are fuzzy, where I’m not fully layered, fully human. Or lying, pretending, fooling myself. The best readers I have had talk about other books, making road signs for me, so I know where I am in the dark heart of the piece I’m making. The best readers are like flashlights, sent down from above ground, on strings, hovering for awhile in my mine.

The best readers perform a kind of reading that is exactly like writing. It’s hard work, this kind of reading. It takes enormous focus, energy.

* 

We can’t trust the praise we get. We can’t trust the criticism we get. We can only trust that we know how to get into the good writing mind, we’ve done it before. If my readers’ comments make me want to go write, just as a great book makes me go write, I know I’m showing it to the right person, for the right reasons, at the right time. If, after showing the work, I shut down (this doesn’t shine, Heather doesn’t shine) I’ve shown too soon, or allowed a child part of myself to do all the showing, all the hoping. It’s likely I don’t know yet what I want to know (I just want love and candy and stars–but they aren’t going to make me feel really good, or sustain me.)

I’m curious–what do you know about this process?

What kind of feedback helps you most? Who have been your best readers? What did they do? Were they better at some kinds of your work than others? What comments have devastated you? Who in you was devastated? Do you read other people’s work regularly, keep your chops up? do you think that process—actively reading, being a fellow writer’s flashlight—directly improves your own truth-finding process, your own self-editing, your own craftsmanship? Are you most comfortable with criticism or praise? What do you really, truly trust?

What if we always trusted the praise and doubted, questioned, turned away from the criticism? what would happen to our work, our writing lives?