On writing as an experiment
(back to regularly scheduled content)
In business schools, the term “failing up” is popular. When you fail, the adage goes, you just continue to plug away at aims and goals with more wisdom and perspective. Writers often do things like keep or count rejections as a way of measuring progress.
If I’m being entirely honest, I believe I’ve failed up in life and writing, but I’ve also just failed. Plenty of times. And I’m not sure counting would be good for the healthy ego. To be kinder to myself about it, let’s put it this way: There have been many times when my anticipation did not match the outcome.
While life is something that we either have control over or we don’t and different doctrines define the amount of control or lack thereof in different ways, one thing I like to take comfort in is that I can control my behavior to a point by educating myself and training myself to pause before reacting to circumstances. What I cannot control is the circumstance. And I can’t control the outcome. Not entirely. Not even with writing.
My own writing has been hit-and-miss over the years. I’ve published in over 200 journals between print and online magazines, a few anthologies, and I have three collections of fiction published with different presses; further, in the last three or four years, I’ve only submitted to those I truly hold in high regard. Some people count publications as a win, but I do not. I realized that some of the work I published was undercooked, while other works were cooked to perfection, and at least one or two stories were burnt at the edges.
I think part of me valued the safety of short work. Short stories are rarely critiqued too widely. This is largely because they are rarely read and remembered in the same way as longer works. The time investment simply isn’t there; therefore, neither is the dedication to complex thinking about the story—even if it’s truly great.
There are exceptions, of course, such as Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” or George Saunders’ “Sticks.” There are also story collections that use cohesion and themes to pull together a longer work from short literary inquiries and adventures. Short stories that are read and reread and reread again are anomalies in modern critique, however. Perhaps because there’s just too much information out there.
I believe I’ve had two or three of these over the course of two hundred or so catch on and find multiple reprints. These are the stories that end up in classrooms and textbooks. They take on a life of their own. But when I look back at these stories, I see only my own critique of the work. Am I fully satisfied? Mostly.
And what about others’ critiques? The novel may be more widely read, it’s also most certainly less immune to critique. Nor is any writing immune to outright criticism—logical and emotional.
There are people who do not like that I wrote about pagan practices and questioned mental health diagnoses in my novel, for instance, despite my painstaking efforts to approach these subjects with reverence but not dogma or diminishment.
On one platform, I got a 1-star rating from a religious reviewer before any other reviews came in (and before the book was available, so there’s that). Meanwhile, I’ve also received excellent reviews that say things like “I am not the target audience for this, but…” which confuses me because it implies I was targeting an audience (this is literary fiction, folks, I’m just happy to have a couple thousand readers). But I get the implication. It’s about a bunch of women, so it must be for women. This is something that another’s experience would dictate to them.
There are also reviews that speak to the writing itself, which are usually written by fellow authors and are full of more specific, language-based praise or criticism (so far, praise, which is nice). These are valuable. Finally, there are critical reviews that attack an author, not the work. I have not received any of these for the novel but have for shorter works.
The excellent reviews — those, I think we can all handle. But what to do with the others?
Many authors I know simply don’t read reviews that are not glowing. But I can’t help it. I’m curious. I’m also often curious about the critiques of books I’ve loved, and I find truly transformational books rarely boast only positive reviews.
I believe a book, when well done, will provoke. It will cause an emotional response. To find a critique of our work then is to understand that it may or may not be useful. It is NOT the same as a failure but a mere reflection of an equation. Work + reader = review. The reader is a factor. Their life experience and interpretation provide them with a single lens through which to view the story.
What is failure is an author’s dismay with shared work. A knowing that it wasn’t quite done or we listened to too many critiques and over-edited it. Our own critical reviews are where success and failure live.
But, alas, I believe we can fail up.
So I offer this exercise for writers who are unsure about whether they are ready to share a work. It’s a simple test to determine whether it’s under or overcooked.
Experiment:
a. Read your work as a critic might. Look for patterns and purpose and how the work transcends or does not transcend experience. Look at who the work leaves out and who the work is “for,” then decide how much that matters.
b. Write a review of your work. Just a paragraph or two.
This prompt may reveal flaws, but it will also prepare you for perspectives on work that are just that — not failures but responses. And those, we can control.
Thanks for reading!
xo jen
Perhaps I am the oldest naive reader in the room, but...who writes critical reviews that attack an author, not the work? Is this within the context/platform of the work in question?