Yesterday I talked about publication anxiety, in a jesting manner. The truth is, it's a great experience. It just is yet another step on your path, and that path is becoming even steeper than when you began.
A couple days ago I saw two classmates comment about writing not being profitable. Publication is the way to getting paid. Now, I know those classmates are excellent writers. Others are, too. But I only know of a handful of classmates publishing. They're good, but they're not unusually good compared to the rest.
I remember a graduating student say she'd miss workshops, and I told her the thrill of publishing and getting paid would make up for it. I really think every MFA student should seek to publish something, no matter how small, if only for the thrill of having a stranger believe in their work.
Novels take years to write, and may not sell. Marketing to magazines not only yields you a little pocket money as you toil at your day job, it creates a reputation, a brand, a readership. All of this helps market you to a publisher, and ensures book sales if you're doing it indie. Publicizing yourself helps. Introverts can learn to promote themselves in a way that feels comfortable for them, but the greatest block they have is just starting to assert their own skills.
It takes a long time to be the sort of author that gets unexpected requests to submit work, and part of that process is being a friend to your editors. Write well, be professional in receiving criticism and doing work on deadline. Also, do your part, if needed, to improve publicity and keep them in business, and they'll be more likely to ask you to do work for them again.
Modesty and waiting for your work to be recognized often means you die unknown. Books don't march to publishers by themselves. You have to write book proposals, market to publishers. You have to assert you're worthy (never tear down the competition. That's stupid.) So why might some be hestiating to publish despite the quality of work they're already doing?
Well, I will never forget the classmate who said she had gotten an anonymous scrawl on her work, saying in effect her writing sucked and she should never write again. That should never happen in a workshop. Never. I was appalled. After saying how dreadful that was, I said:
"Listen, I know you know this, but you need to hear this: You are a good writer. You are. Don't stop."
Another female classmate told me she cried after her work was savaged in the same workshop above (which I was not in.) It's also probably not a coincidence that I found friction happening around me suddenly after I discussed something I was working on for publication, either. It was so unbearable I did quit writing for the summer just to recoup.
In Deaf culture, we call such negative behavior to others' potential success "the crab theory" of human nature. The image is a bunch of crabs stuck in a crab-barrel. One crawls out, the others latch down, pull them down to their level. This mentality not only stops the crabs from getting out of the barrel, it can tear the crabs apart. I grew up fighting this.
Now, this kind of thing can undermine any writer's confidence, make them feel unworthy to publish. I hope this is not happening, but yes, I smell the familiar smell of the crab barrel. The only solution is for humans to stop thinking like crabs, and recognize they have a common goal (freedom), and to work together to achieve that by supporting each other.
Think about it. Why the heck would anybody pay for a MFA degree just to be endlessly abused? Or abuse others? You can find cheaper rates at your local S&M parlor, and much more interesting outfits, too. Real criticism does not mean making the person feel worthless. That's jealous sniping.
Constructive criticism stays on the draft itself. Don't joke-- it may not be clear it is a joke. Make honest and kind responses to the draft that help the writer find growth. Beware any use of negative language-- "don't. can't, shouldn't, isn't"-- or passing true/false judgments on the details.
Stay as neutral and brief as possible. Often a ? and a circled line works better than a long description,
A holistic criticism of the draft should be limited to 3 key points, with some positive comments on what makes the draft work. Workshopping is not copyediting.
Interestingly, readers often mark true details as wrong when it's either: underdeveloped, out of the blue and not detailed enough to make it specific to the story. It's better to avoid this habit of calling out details as wrong, because you may be calling the writer a liar.
Better to find out why it rings false: telling versus showing? Is the detail jarring, seeming irrelevant, and hard to understand in context? Sometimes a reader just has a hot button hit. Not pretty when it happens, I would say. But it's a honest response, even if painful to hear.
Sexually explicit material, religious material, or abusive scenes can cause trauma to resurface, which is why such ugly material needs to be handed very sensitively by the writer, with feeling, depth, and context, not just put in for shock value. Many writers learn this lesson the hard way.
Constructive criticism is a key life skill, but it can be hard to apply in a situation of destructive criticism. First, empty yourself of anger. It is very hard to mask pre-existing anger when you are in a critical situation.
1) Take a half-hour just to to meditate on all the good things that have happened to you that you are grateful. Think of everybody who's said a kind word to you when you might not have really earned it by being the best ever. Think of strangers that have touched your life by just being compassionate. Think of all the little things people do as courtesy that makes life easier-- opening doors, etc. Write it all down in a list if you want, but focus on this-- good stuff, small or big, that reaffirmed your ties to the human race.
This exercise may change your life, if not your writing. Even hard lives often contain unexpected warmth. If you can't feel warmth, you can't give it.
2) Do the work in advance-- and write your criticisms on a separate piece of paper as you read, then only mark up the piece after. This allows you to edit your criticism to a simpler, more kind form. It also lets you recognize your language tendencies. Also, give yourself permission to take a pass if you can't think of anything helpful other than OMG, how disgusting.
3) As a writer, remember: readers can only comment on what they see; they can't see what the final story will be like in the end. Only the writer knows this. So many suggestions may be useless. However, readers, by the very things they react to, can tell writers where the story hasn't fully grown up yet, what confuses them, how they react to it. Read carefully with a thick skin, even "useless" criticism can be translated into something useful to the writer.
3) Manners, kindness, and understanding matters exactly because, even constructive criticism makes people mad. It hurts to miss something in a draft. The first impulse is to defend your work, see the reader as half-blind, vile, incompetent. This is when deep breathing comes in handy to calm down. The next step is to think carefully based on some assumptions: I know the story. The reader has misunderstood the story. That means there's something wrong with how I'm showing things. It may not be where the reader thinks it is, but I will pay attention to that "problem spot, too," I furiously revise to a point where I believe the reader could never complain about that particular issue again. Even if I really think that criticism is totally wrong.
Then I look at my new draft and see if the revisions actually does improve the story. Often, it does. Weird, that. Now, in most cases these readers of course were really wrong. But how I read them and responded made my work better. That's what I call constructive criticism. Even though I'm not going to be besties with that person anytime in this life, that reader's response still helped me.
If people understand how to be kind in the critical process (on both sides), then support and growth can occur in workshops. Even one person who takes criticism with anger and bitterness can dampen a workshop and make people less willing to give feedback. One person being malicious can ruin the experience, especially if nobody politely enforces the norms of respect.
I am very pro-publication for all writers, but I do really think that publication per se is not proof of greatness, just of courage to publish. Everybody has their different paces and distances. Some people are going to be short-story sprinters, others will take decades to work on a novel or novel cycle. Some will be more prolific than others. Some will be happy taking on technical writing or freelancing to pay the bills, like I have, but others won't.
And every writer, finally, grows towards their own voice, not the voices others would have for them.
Whenever I see distinctive voices grow, I know a workshop is really working. That's a win-win situation. That's the antithesis of the crab barrel. That's what will lead to good things for everyone in the class. And it's a lot more fun for everybody to read, too. It's the zone. Find it within yourself.