Eye on the Prize: Skin Like an Elephant
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How Critiques Affect the Stories of Professional Writers
I confess that I am a story pleaser. It’s an odd paradox, given that I’m not particularly a people pleaser. My parents advocated individuality and independence, so growing up, I carried a confident perspective that if a certain group of popular people didn’t take to me, obviously they weren’t my brand of popular. And that’s okay! Human favor is a fickle wind, not something to set one’s compass by. The point is never the opinion—it’s what you do with that opinion.
Flash forward a few decades to when I walked into my MFA creative writing program. This was the big league, or at least it was to me. I didn’t get my undergraduate degree in English; journalism and public relations were my bailiwicks. I had writing tools for an entirely different narrative form. Yet there I was—committed to being an in-residence fiction writer. A storyteller. Only I wasn’t entirely sure how to do that. I felt the calling, however, to weave narrative yarns out of thin air, to entertain, to please.
GATHER AROUND: WORKSHOP 101
Into the workshop sanctuary I brought my first short story: lovingly crafted, double-spaced, one-inch-margined, collated, evenly stapled copies. The rules were simple: I handed out my work, and my fellow writers read, analyzed, and returned the following class period ready for discussion. As the author, I was to take the role of mute fly on the wall. I’d noted that the second- and third-year MFA-ers wouldn’t so much as lift their eyes from their journals during these critical evaluations, and I followed professional suit. The manners of pro writers! I was determined to join their ranks.
A week later, I entered my designated workshop. Oh, to even have a workshop focused on my work—it made me giddy … and terrified. I had a belly full of hopeful nerves that I’d done the job well. That my story had engrossed, enlightened, and amused as a pleasing offering to the story saints. With naïve confidence, I set out my journal to jot down all the encouragement and ideas for plot expansion that I knew would come from my esteemed tribe. Then, with my face down and ears up, I waited for them to begin.
“Let’s start with the title,” said my professor, a sage woman of words whom, to this day, I bow before reverently. “The Awakening by Sarah McCoy.” She waited with eyebrows peaked.
A hand shot up across the table, one of my fellow first-years. (Old student habits die hard—we’d been instructed to speak candidly in conversation without being called on.) “You can’t title a work by the same name as another book, particularly a book of literary canon. The Awakening was already used by Kate Chopin.”
I flushed. I. Was. A. Rube. I hadn’t read any Chopin and cursed my non-English bachelor’s degree, insufficient in a room full of literary scholars. I jotted down the name. First thing in the morning, I’d go to the library and get that book. I’d read all night so that by the next class meeting, I’d be much wiser.
My professor smiled. “Correct. You cannot. Now, what else is wrong with the title?”
What else? We were still on the title! I looked up and met the eyes of my colleagues—a knee-jerk reaction, a cardinal sin of workshop. My professor’s brows lifted higher. I broke out in a visible sweat and mumbled an apology. Cardinal sin number two broken: The author was never to speak. They graciously ignored my muttering and went on to probe, dissect, and review every character sigh, action, prose cadence, and semicolon. I was numb through it all, too busy silently berating myself for failing my readers from the beginning—from hello, this is my name—to think clearly. I spent the next couple of weeks obsessively revising in an attempt to include every critique in our three-hour workshop—to please every single reader.
Have you ever chewed a piece of gum for so long that it turns into a wad of mealy mush? That was my work-in-progress, The Awakening. I tried to console myself: It was my first exercise in professional creative writing; it didn’t have to be perfect; it didn’t have to work; I ought to learn from it and move on. But I couldn’t. What bothered me went far deeper. All of my life, I’d been a person who respected other people’s opinions but would never have based my entire self-worth on them. Yet here I was, allowing these subjective judgments to entirely transform my story worlds—extensions of my imagination, of myself. I was miserably unhappy about not having made other people happy with my storytelling.
I wish I could tell you that I worked through that. I wish this was a missive on how to overcome that compulsion and say, “Fie to you! Like it or not, I shall be what I shall be!” But the truth is that I spent the next three years in my MFA program feeling each negative critique like a burn until I’d formed calluses over every inch of my authorial skin.
“You’ve got to have skin like an elephant,” that same sage professor told us. “Anything less and you’ll bleed out at your first scratch. The pro-writer world is a safari.”
LISTEN TO THE PROS(E)
I asked some pro-writer friends about their experiences with critical feedback. Their stories are insightful glimpses into how critique—from readers, editors, friends, and others—colors their work and writing process.
When I first started writing, I was very eager for opinions. I hadn’t yet learned to trust my own instincts, and I think that’s something that comes with time. When I finished my very first novel (long ago chalked up to a “learning experience”), I eagerly printed it out and sent it to two trusted, well-read friends. After a few days, they both got back to me: “Oh, wonderful, Melanie!” “I’d certainly read this! Well done!” I was so happy—until I realized that somehow, when printing it off, I hadn’t included the final two chapters; what they’d read and “honestly” critiqued wasn’t even the entire manuscript. When I gently pressed my friends about this, they both did then hesitantly reveal that they’d thought it’d ended a little abruptly. “But it was still good!” That was the last time I ever asked a friend for a critique. It’s just not possible for someone who likes you and wants you to succeed—and someone who has to see you in real life, at the school pickup line or the supermarket—to give you an honest, kick-in-the-pants critique. And that’s the kind of critique you need in order to succeed, until you are in the place where you can do that to yourself … . And as embarrassing as that experience was, I am thankful for it, because it really did force me to rely on my own instincts rather than someone else’s.
—Melanie Benjamin, New York Times best-selling author of The Swans of Fifth Avenue
I will never understand the writers who say they don’t read their reviews. Reviews are written by readers, and readers are an author’s customers. Ignoring your customers is never a good idea. Writers cannot afford to be delicate flowers. They must be mighty oaks. Online reviews on sites like Amazon and the like have been helpful to me. If you look at the reviews for my first two novels (Something Missing and Unexpectedly, Milo), you’ll see very positive reviews and ratings, but you’ll also find a consistent criticism: My novels start out slow. Reviewers advise potential readers to give the books a chance. Stick with them. Don’t give up. They say that the stories are worth the slow start. I paid attention to these reviews. I accepted the fact that I may have a tendency to ease into a story, exploring character before really launching into the plot. And while that may be the way I prefer to tell a story, most readers prefer a little plot to get the story moving early on. As a result, I write a little differently today. I find a way to get my plot rolling a little earlier. I look for ways to hook my readers in the early pages. And I think my books are better because of it. Writers don’t need to adhere to the criticism of their reviewers, but to ignore the reviews completely is a ridiculous waste of potentially valuable data.
—Matthew Dicks, international best-selling author of The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs
For one of my earlier books, I noticed that I had more than one hundred five-star reviews on Amazon and was feeling quite proud because that means my book’s wonderful, right? And then one night on tour, needing a little feel-good moment before going to bed, I looked at the reviews again and saw that the most recent review was a one-star [review]. He’d read less than a chapter before dismissing it as a “chick book.” Being the thin-skinned writer that I am, I ignored the one hundred good reviews and obsessed on that one bad review as if that were the only one that held any truth. I turned my obsession into a mini-Internet stalking episode until, three hours later, I realized what I was doing. That’s when I had my epiphany: It will never be in a writer’s best interest to allow an anonymous review to affect her writing or self-worth.
—Karen White, New York Times best-selling author of Flight Patterns
I had an editor once who said I had to ask the same three questions of all my female protagonists, and those questions had to inform the story throughout the book: What does she want? Why can’t she have it? How is she going to get it? The books I wrote with her had far more drama and suspense than my previous books, and although I have softened my stories and gone back to my character-driven roots, I am always aware of those questions in the back of my mind.
—Jane Green, New York Times and international best-selling author of Summer Secrets
We had written two manuscripts that hadn’t sold. Hell, we couldn’t even get an agent! Everyone said the same thing: Your writing shows promise, but something is missing. The only problem? We didn’t know what that “something” was. Then, while writing our third novel, a published writer friend generously offered to take a look and gave us some amazing feedback: Show; don’t tell. It was simple, but in just a few spots, she had put her finger on exactly what we were doing wrong. That weekend we added ten thousand words based on her critique. And before we knew it, we had a finished manuscript that sold very quickly to Atria Books—and a ton of gratitude for our wonderful writerly friend.
—Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke, co-authors of The Year We Turned Forty
Some people love to revise. I’m not one of them. The pleasure of writing, for me, comes from that initial imaginative thrust, when I’m filling up white space. And yet, revision—prescribed by my editors, as stressful and frustrating as their advice can be—has saved all of my published novels. It’s not that I don’t polish on my own. I do. Mercilessly and constantly. That’s how I begin every morning, fine-tuning what I worked on yesterday. But after I’ve taken the draft as far as it can go, there’s always more work to be done. Work I can’t recognize on my own. I need that outside set of eyes to tell me this subplot is distracting, this character’s motivations are muddled, the point of view ought to switch from first to third, the final act is a train wreck, etc. Maybe this will change, but it’s been true for my four novels: I will cut hundreds of pages from every manuscript and write hundreds more to take their place. And by the time I’m done, I recognize how essential the changes are, how much prouder of the story I am, how my editor is a coach who helps me realize my potential.
—Benjamin Percy, award-winning author of The Dead Lands
I spent two years working on a historical novel [while] under contract to Algonquin Books. I didn’t show my editor any pages after she’d approved the proposal, figuring it would be best to give her a finished—meaning revised many times—draft. When she finally read it, she had serious issues, one of which was that she thought there should be a modern-day story threaded through the historical one: not a simple frame, a nearly equivalent storyline. This was not at all what I had in mind, but I respected her opinion and decided to give it a try. This necessitated pulling the entire book apart, eliminating characters, changing plot points and character roles, throwing out well over a hundred pages and adding in about 120. It took another two years. But now we have a book we’re both proud of, The Muralist, which was a number one Indie Next List [selection], so clearly she was right. And so was I for listening to her.
—B.A. Shapiro, New York Times best-selling author of The Muralist
Pro Tip
You can reject critiques of your work, but you should always be in tune with why you’re doing so. Is it because your gut check says unreservedly that the critique is wrong, or is it because you know the path ahead would be long if you made that change? Professional authors serve the work.
—Therese Walsh
LEARN FROM THE WRITER SAFARI
For my part, I’ve officially been on safari since 2009 with the release of my debut novel. Since then, I’ve published a novella in an anthology and two more novels (including my latest, The Mapmaker’s Children). I thought it was tough having a dozen writers sit around a table critiquing my work—until I received thousands of readers’ reviews.
Everyone has an opinion, and I respect those opinions. I listen earnestly to reviewers, honored that they’ve taken the time to read my work when there’s a plethora of good writing out there. But I’ve since learned to use critiques constructively—as kindle for my writing goals. They refine and sharpen my narrative tools so I can be even more efficient in crafting future novels. I’ve also learned that not every criticism need be branded on my bibliographical body. The challenge for authors is to objectively decide which subjective opinions are seasoned timber and which are soggy greenwood. Leave the wet sentiments to smoke up someone else’s campfire, and use the critical lumber to blaze your trail.
When we look back on our respective writing legacies, what we’re all seeking is a “The End” that’s well done—a life story that satisfies. I try to remember that, so long as I feel my heart beating in my chest, I’m only in the midst of a chapter, and that it’s important that our journeys please the pleasers, too.
How to Get in Your Own Way, Method 16: Respond to Reviews
You’ll be tempted to reply to a harsh review when the reviewer obviously misread the point of your book. Before you do, ask yourself: When was the last time somebody convinced you to like something you hated?
—Bill Ferris