I am back to writing in my blog. This is just my way of coping with the daily challenges as they come on. But that is not what I wanted to tell.
You know, writing the story of my WIP is not easy. At the start it was both personal and not, because I didn't know actually these people. But, as it is with reality, everything becomes so much worse if you get to know individuals, and don't see them as numbers. When they become your friends and lovers, the connection is strong enough to make you weep. I have fallen for my MCs, and that poses quite a challenge. Not only with regard to believability in writing, but in terms of caring. I care too much.
The first attempt to tell went overboard, I didn't pay attention to readability of my style. Now that has been remedied, the newest critiquer never had a problem with that. Phew. At least I did one single thing good for him! To hear him tell it, it is the worst story since the start of humankind. So, where do I go from there?
This is not a trivial question, I have to teach myself to deal better with criticism. I am going to be cynical here, so be prepared!
So which kind of critiques are going to be in my life?
And that's really it. There are no other type of critique(r)s out there. All this has been said before in millions of permutations, but this rant has come from me, for myself. Just had to write it off.
- Kind ones. The ones who just love your writing style and hardly say a word other than praise. They give no advice, just ego polishing. Now I am not arguing that some of that isn't necessary from time to time to just pick myself up from the ground again and again, but it really is not useful.
I can appreciate such a critique and bask in the warm praise.
- The ones who focus on your style and tear it apart. These are the easiest to deal with as I have found. Once I got over heartache that I had to amend my style it was more or less easy to do and adhere to the new regime. I still have to catch myself on and off when falling back into bad patterns, but I just have to edit carefully after. This works.
- And then there are the ones who don't care for your story. They rip every single character apart, tell you to start at a different place, want you to rewrite everything to their specification. This class of critiquers is impossible to please. And I will not ever be rid of them, a story can't please everyone. In a sense this type of critique is healthy preparation, because if I ever go out and publish there will be a whole lot of readers pissed off at me. From every quarter, and not all will be ones I can say honestly that I wouldn't care about their opinion.
Some of these will be the exact ones I am writing my story for. This will be a whole lot worse than just getting random crits and will require guts to deal with. In comparison to what will be coming down then, dealing with these random critiquers should be easy. So my advice to myself here is: Get used to it. Try to look impassionate at every single point they raise and don't think further about it if it doesn't merit a point. And say 'Thank you'. This costs nothing, but is easier said than done.
-
Raven484, Cave Troll, Oscar Leigh and 1 other person like this.
Comments
Sort Comments By