As you may know, I turned in a story this week that just came up on Critters for critique.
And, it’s true. I friggin’ can’t take criticism.
I keep thinking this is going to get easier. That I will magically start not taking all the crits personally. I really am trying, but the first crit just came in, and it has gotten so under my skin I want to scream.
You know the Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz? I try to live by those tenets every single day.
In case you don’t know them, here they are:
- Don’t take anything personally.
- Always do your best.
- Don’t make assumptions.
- Be impeccable with your word.
Such words of wisdom. Wish I was wise. (sigh)
It’s not like I don’t get criticisms on my work all the time. I work on documents and maps that get torn apart, changed, altered, added to, re-written, and re-directed all the time. But somehow, I have, over the years, been able to remove my work from me. The defensive me that gets the hairs on the back of my neck raised whenever anyone says anything remotely stupid about what I produce.
That’s not the case with my writing. Maybe I just need to view my writing as I view my maps – something for the clients. But that’s awfully hard as I do not have any ‘clients’ for my writing. Right now, I really only write for myself.
It’s not that I don’t value the critiquers opinions. If someone pointed out you need a comma here, or this sentence is awkward – reword, or your plot sucks, then I can take it all in stride. But when they just don’t get the friggin’ point of the story, it makes me mad!
So…since it is rude to respond to my critiques in any other manner than to say a heartfelt ‘thank you’ (which, I am, very thankful for, I mean, damn, they read my story, for better or worse), I will respond here (this will be ongoing for the remainder of the critter week, the 23rd of Dec):
…purple prose…this is an action story, keep it that way…
What the fuck? No really, what the fuck? Purple prose? I have never been accused of purple prose! An action story? Did you even read the story? It’s not an action story! It’s about death. It’s about a woman becoming Death! There’s no friggin’ action!
…make it a true partnership rather than exploitation. I think the story is good enough that it deserves a better ending.
That’s the whole point, dip-wad. Didn’t you read the story? How else was she to become Death? She didn’t want to go there, she was exploited her entire life, and then the final forcing into being the very agent of Death and corruption. The story is all about exploitation. It deserves a better ending? Do you mean you want a nice happy ending? There’s no happy endings in tmso-land, buddy. Get real.
Okay, I feel better now. I won’t add any more rant posts this week. I’ll just keep adding on to this one. 
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EDIT: Argh! Last night the light bulb turned on (at around 3am). The reviewer is absolutely right. My story sucks, and I see exactly why now. A couple of other reviewers also gave me some good insights, and I understand my story’s central flaw. Not sure if that will change the story much, but at least I understand now. Maybe, just maybe, I’m learning something. 
Hey, I missed this post (probably due to the old theme).
Stephen King wrote some good advice on critiques, too. Something along the lines of… “If one person doesn’t like the ending, another the beginning, and the third doesnät like the title … leave the story as it is. But if mutiple people point out the same stuff, go back and work on it.”
Also, it seems to me sometimes that people try too hard to write a critique (maybe especially so at critters because they earn points for them, right?). They don’t like your style, maybe, because of personal preference, and then slam the term “purple prose” on it, attempting to sound professional.
I’m curious what you learned from these critiques and how in the end you were wrong. If you have the time, I’d be very interested to know…
See ya!
Ug, you had to ask. I was tempted to delete this post because it’s so whiny. I am such a dweeb.
Point of clarification: yes, on Critters.org you earn ‘points’ for putting in a crit but you only need come up with a few comments, and you only have to do one a week to keep up crit ratio to 100%. Any of your submissions will still be reviewed even if your ratio falls to 75%, so really, you don’t have to crit once a week, but maybe three weeks out of four. There are usually between 20 and 30 submissions up for critting each week. A Critters member has a choice of critting any one of those stories, or none, or all of ‘em. It’s entirely up to the member. When someone chooses to read your story, it’s usually because of the following reasons (1) it happened to come up in their inbox randomly chosen by the Critter Captain, (2) they read threw the list and the title and genre caught their interest, or (3) they recognized the author’s name as someone who crit their work earlier or they know the author’s work and like it. So, in my case, when someone takes the time to read and crit my story, I am incredibly grateful and take everything they say to heart, because there are stories on the submission list that no one touches for all the reasons you might not want to crit a horrible story: the story just sucks. These folks didn’t have to choose my story to comment on. They could have just as easily ignored it all together, or read it, found it to be too much trouble for what it was worth, and ignore it.
Okay, with that caveat…
What did I learn? Nobody likes a passive protagonist. Which, I guess I already knew, but apparently it didn’t stick because I wrote a 7000 word short story with a passive protagonist.
The entire story was inspired by some recent events. A real life story in which the victim was a victim her entire life. At a very early age she was subjugated to abuse, and she just took it, continuing on into adulthood. There are some life stories that never change. I wanted to capture that hopelessness in a fictional story, and, well, I think I did. To be sure, there were some mechanical errors to my story as well (passive sentences that I didn’t even recognize as passive), but on the whole I think I captured the hopelessness to the bitter end, and well, nobody liked that (so far, I have until next Wednesday to get all my crits). Their comments were: Why didn’t she do anything? She had plenty of opportunity, the power was right there for her to take.
But that was the point. She did have the power to change her circumstances, but she doesn’t and ends up becoming the essence of death.
So what did I learn? No body likes reality in fiction. I mean, my story was a complete fantasy (wanna read it?), but it didn’t follow the traditional story arc (protag has a problem, protag struggles with problem, protag overcomes problem, the end). People want good to conquer evil. That’s what I learned (or perhaps, re-learned).
That surprises me actually. I thought the current trend was realistic as possible even if the ending is evil evil evil, but perhaps that’s just the case with movies.
I have to say I’m not a fan of endings that convey hopelessness (though there are numerous exceptions), so I’m interested to see how I’ll react to your story. Do send it to my email, please. I might be able to read it on the plane to Vienna
Well, the fact that folks do not like it, might have more to do with the fact that the writing isn’t all that great. I think really good writers can get away with writing non-traditional story arcs, but the stage that I am at – it just might be better to stick with the program until I got the basics down. Cheers