Emotional Reactions to Critique

Laurel Snyder once wrote a really interesting blog post for the Office of Letters and Light in the "Now What Months" after National Novel Writing Month.  When to Listen to Your Readers and When to Ignore Them.  The main take away from this is that the thing to look for when receiving critique is a moment when you respond emotionally to what your editor tells you.

Example 1:

Critique: This line is awkward.

Me:  Ah.  Yep.  It happens.

Then I fix it and and all is well.

This edit was helpful, because having awkward lines is not something I want in a final draft.  However, it's not going to spur a round of soul searching and attempts at self-improvement.

Example 2:

Critique: This character is really dull.  I don't care about them at all.

Me (externally): Oh.

Me (internally): How dare you!  That's my baby you're talking about!  My baby is a Jungian representation of an aspect of myself!  You think I'm dull?  You don't care about me?  You just don't get it, you unsophisticated, shallow mean-face! 

Whoa there, Sparky.

That kind of outrage has to come from somewhere, and, although it's hard to hear or accept or realize, the lady doth protest too much.



This article says that this kind of response means that the critique is hitting close to a flaw that you know is there.  They may or may not be right that it's something that should be fixed, but it is definitely something to ponder.

I've been thinking about this since January when I read the article, and it makes a great deal of sense.  And I've found that I have emotional responses to critique on two occasions, both of which fall under the umbrella of "a flaw I knew was there."

1. Someone calls me on something for which people used to mock me in school.

Mainly, spelling.  Spell check has greatly improved my abilities to hide how terrible I am at telling the difference between vowels, but spell check cannot protect me from the horror of homophones.

Did you know compliment and complement are different words?  Whaaaat?  How would I have ever known that?  I lost it when someone called me on this.

This is a weakness for me, and when people critique it, it brings up all this history of disdain for my writing abilities that have been drilled into my brain since I started writing awkward letters on handwriting paper with the red dashed line in the middle.

2. It's something I've beaten myself up about, and then worked really hard to convince myself that I am my own worst critic and it's okay.

Nope!  Not okay!  Take that, everyone who told me to calm down and quit being a perfectionist.  I wasn't over reacting when I said it was awful.  I'm always right.  My work sucks.  I should give up.

Etc.

Now, if they'd said they hated (HATED) something that had never occurred to me as a problem, I would mostly find that amusing.  I'd probably look at it, but in the end it would be easier for me to shrug and say that I can't please everyone.

But this.  This.  This gets me thinking that if this one instance was bad, then everything I've been worrying about is also bad.  (Because I'm right and everything is awful.) At some point in the process I think that everything is bad.  So this escalates quickly.  Additionally, in these instances I will jump straight from "it needs work" or "it could improve" to "it's terrible."

So, after this insight into my delicate, piddly self-confidence and with some thought given to "When to Listen to Your Readers and When to Ignore Them," I've gotten a lot better at recognizing when this is happening and stopping the spiral before I wipe my hard drive, burn all my notebooks in a BBQ pit in the park, bury myself under a pile of dirty laundry, and cry.* Instead, I can be a little bummed, then throw myself into fixing it, which usually involves a 12 step plan written on a post-it note.


*I have never actually done any of this**

**Except the pile of laundry part