Blocking Writer’s Block – Part X – Grow a Thicker Skin (But Not, Perhaps, A Carapace)
How do you inure yourself to criticism? How do you view it as instructive rather than destructive? (Note that when I say “you”, I mean me. This is a task I find truly difficult.)
When I first considered this question, I thought of a cockroach—something with not just a thick skin, but a hard carapace. A creature that is at the height of evolutionary sustainability. A survivor.
But I can’t quite stomach becoming more cockroach-like, and I don’t think I can advise it for you either. Because, aside from its general lack of appeal, a cockroach scurries away from any bright light, which is exactly what a lot of criticism feels like–a too-bright light shone right into your eyes, or on your weak spots (that flap of flab at the back of a thigh. Or worse, if you’re a writer: those awkward transitions, that plot that just isn’t credible, that character, based on you, who’s simpering and inane.
The fear of criticism, or the experience of criticism, can be an old-style Berlin Wall to a struggling writer. Not only is it an obstacle between your desire to work and your ability to work; it is also a wall between the two halves of yourself—the half that really does want to learn and grow and improve, and the half which wants anything you do, no matter how flawed, to be called brilliant, at least, good enough.
Because I’m so bad at this, I can only give a few random clues as to how to get better:
1. Don’t show work too early. It can be both humiliating and paralyzing to have your reader point out problems that you would have caught yourself if you’d only waited a few weeks beyond the glow of completion.
2. Take care to whom you show things. It’s helpful if you truly believe that your reader respects you and your abilities, no matter what they say about the particular piece.
3. Try to focus on what you can learn from a specific critique. Keep in mind that even if some criticism may not be fully justified, it may still point out something that doesn’t fully work.
4. After due consideration, if you feel your work is good, hold your ground. Consider your reader’s perspective and taste. Is it the same as yours? Is it infallible?
5. Distance yourself. Those words on the page are not you. What you wrote yesterday is not you today. There are countless ways to skin a cat; it takes all types to make a world. Which means—yes, you can revise it (no matter how impossible that feels).
6. When all the above has been tried, and you really just can’t bear any more, scurry into a dark crevice. But don’t just wait till it’s safe to come out again. Work from there. Keep working even from there.
For more on Writer’s Block, check other posts in this category. And, as always, check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson, on Amazon or at link on ManicDDaily home page.
Explore posts in the same categories: Stress, writer's blockTags: cockroaches, Criticism, dealing with criticism, Karin Gustafson, manicddaily, writer's block, writing
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ManicDDaily 
November 10, 2009 at 12:46 am
I see two polar strategies for making peace with criticism.
The first is to sell out. Decide to write a best seller, pen a chart-topper, or paint whatever the collectors can’t resist. Use criticism, in whatever way you can, to make your work more successful in the marketplace. If the criticism comes from a successful practioner, receive, nay steal, the tricks of the trade without hesititation. If it comes from a potential audience member, weigh it as market research. Form no aesthetic attachments, cut mercilessly whatever stands in the way of world succes.
Or else, go to the other extreme. Make art because you must, and step entirely outside the discourse of success and failure. Listen to people because you value insight into what you do –into what you have to do– but not with the aim of “getting better.” Also let go of any lingering student’s perspective, any striving for approval, any craving for a high grade. Learn to admire in the work of others not “what works,” not what demonstrates skill or talent, but rather what carries conviction, conveys vision, all that seems not even to ask for *your* approval at all, all that comes across as something of a force of nature. Revise for the pleasure of exploring possibilities, discovering new things, but not for improvement per se. Share your work wantonly, because you have no shame, because unexpectedly it might have value for others, but actually cultivate a taste for almost constant rejection anyway. Remember that alienation is the rule in modern life, and the exceptions, the connections we make, have their own secret logic.
November 10, 2009 at 7:20 am
Wow! Those are both interesting strategies; the problem (for me anyway) is that it’s difficult to have such rational reactions or such pure (as in, unalloyed) goals. Even those who think they are making art because they must, and consciously step outside the discourse of success and failure, find that they can get worn down from lack of acknowledgment, and from the lack of time and resources a bit of success would bring. And, of course, it’s one thing to strive for worldly success, another to achieve it. (Even if you are trying to sell out, you may not have any takers!) I’m not sure I’m really responding to your comment here, except to say that I think either strategy is a bit hard to actually carry out.
Thanks much for reading and thanks for thoughtful response.
November 10, 2009 at 5:49 pm
>And, of course, it’s one thing to strive for worldly success, another to achieve it. (Even if you are trying to sell out, you may not have any takers!)
Of course. And pursuing a sport doesn’t automatically, in fact will rarely, make you a champion, starting a business will rarely make you rich, etc. But it does change your attitude toward criticism. The business person doesn’t achieve the non-attachment of the zen master, but by forming an exclusive attachment to profit, they tend towards to sever all others. If you pursue art-as-business and succeed, all other things equal, you will laugh off your critics. In my imagination, J.K.Rowling doesn’t lie awake at night worrying what Harold Bloom thinks. If you haven’t succeeded, but desire success above all else, you will mercilessly alter whatever holds you back, and if some critic (or perhaps “consultant”) will convincingly tell you the formula, will point you on the road to success, you buy it. You still have to sort out the useful criticism from the bad advice, but it doesn’t sting qua criticism.
The previous paragraph is me theorizing…I don’t know personally many successful sell-outs (a pejorative term, but I do respect people who succeed fairly at such high stakes competition). My main point is that I don’t see a viable middle-of-the-road. Academia is filled with writers, artists and musicians trying to split the difference, and they mostly seem to me a sad lot. Fragile egos who themselves sneer at “academic art” produced anywhere outside their own personal mutual admiration society. I’ll bet they themselves rarely even teach the works of others employed in academia.
November 11, 2009 at 11:53 am
I actually think even those who try to “sell out” are pretty sensitive, and even those who are very successful. For me, the middle road, only road, is accepting that criticism on almost any level has something to offer, food for thought, as it were. The problem is keeping that in mind in the immediate moment of getting the comment. Agh.
November 17, 2009 at 11:37 pm
Sorry David, I thought this comment was “approved” days ago.