Why Hearing Bad Things is Sometimes a Good Thing.

Yesterday I had a writer's date.  If you've never had one of these before, basically it entails 2 (or more) writers sitting down and talking about their work.  One of my very good friends took it upon herself to read the current WIP and give me feedback.

It's always a mixed bag in some ways.  If it wasn't so useful to the whole writing process, I'd probably call it a form of strange, gratifying torture.  Actually, I may still call it that.  I think writers are just a wee bit masochistic.

When I was a young writer (not that I'm old now--perhaps I should say an immature writer), I took criticism like it was literally a stab to my heart.  Seven years ago, I'd give my work away with baited breath and pray that when it came back, it would not be marked up with notes, but with smiley faces and "fantastic!" smeared all over the page.

That meant I was good at it, right?  That I could spin out novel after novel and get published, right?  Imagine my surprise when I found this was not the case.  (I have a box-full somewhere of about 50 or so rejection slips from major publishing houses and agents when I naively thought that all one had to do was write the book and send it off.  Little did I know the truly staggering amount of work that happens after the first draft of the book).

I nearly gave up.  What was the point?  This was hard.  Maybe I was just not very good?  But the words still came--in the park, in the middle of the night, hanging out with friends.  Ideas and scenes and character still kept speaking to me.  So I wrote in secret, believing all the while that I was really just terrible at it.  Kind of like self-flagellation. I don't know why I did it when all it did was hurt me.  But, I am not one to wallow and once I decided that this was what I really wanted, I resolved to get better.  Let me tell you, if you happen to be an aspiring writer--the only way to get better is to keep on writing.

So I began taking writing courses and my writing got better.  I began getting my pieces back from other immature writers--mostly, who just needed an easy English credit--and they'd tell me things like, "Fantastic!", "Great job!", "Can't wait to read the next chapter".  You'd think I would be stoked, right?

Wrong!

The more pages devoid of truly useful comments I got back, the more I groaned and complained.  This doesn't tell me anything, I would mutter.  How do I know if this character is really working?  If they're believable?  Or if that plot twist actually makes sense?  Is this scene kind of superfluous?  Does it actually lend anything to the story overall?  Or could I cut it with little to no impact on the whole piece?

So yesterday, when my friend came back to me with comments, I had my momentary knee-jerk reaction of: "Oh crap, this is going to be a lot of work, a lot of re-writing.  Throw out whole chunks, they're not even salvageable if these characters suddenly like each other, or that character isn't even there for these four chapters".


Then, as the smoke cleared and I thought about it, I began to realize how much better this would make my book.  I realized this while we sat drinking tea, surrounded by clipboard, paper, and laptops at my dining room table.  The same one the Raptor drew on.  All the while he was being chased by his much more clumsy, but very determined T-Rex of a sister and the two of them were making a racket worthy of pots-banging on New Years' Eve just after midnight.  (Again, I'll say the editor in question here is a very, very good friend of mine to not only put up with, but be able to work in, this sort of atmosphere.)

So where am I now?

I have one more set of criticisms to discuss with another very well trusted friend before I begn the arduous re-write.  Most of the time I'd say don't re-write til you finish the whole thing, but because this will literally change the face of the novel, it must be done in this case.  For now, I will curl up on the couch with my Kindle, read something utterly unrelated to what I'm writing, and let the ideas percolate in the back of my head.

I think the moral of my post today is: Sometimes hearing bad things is actually a good thing.  When people criticise us (if they're not just waaaaay off base) it can make us think about things we normally don't, make us change... make us better.  I think better--whether it is a better writer, better mom, better friend or just human being--is always a good thing.