It’s been a funny few weeks in the world of Mike. Having cut 20k words from my latest attempt at a novel, I’ve been spending much of my Christmas holiday trying to put it all back together again in an order that makes sense, with my ending still not completely finished. Aside from what I do for “fun” (I challenge anyone to call what I do in my spare time “fun”), I’m still working hard for a small PR firm based in the south east. I won’t say too much about it here, for fear of Google picking it up, but sufficed to say, it keeps me busy if nothing else.
While it may not be the most interesting job in the world, what work really has taught me of late, is that criticism can come in all shapes and sizes – the trick is to take it all on the chin, and learn to distinguish justified criticism from that which has just been thrown for the sake of making a fuss.
A long time ago now, I wrote a blog on my website about criticism and how I was criticised – nay, insulted – at a party of all places, for the humour column I used to write for my university magazine. Receiving criticism at university however is quite different to receiving criticism in the world of work. For various reasons I currently work in PR – a form of work where to a large extent, you sell your “writing soul” to the client and must accept whatever they say to you, regardless of whether it’s justified or not. This point was exemplified to me on two occasions recently: in the first case, where my boss received an email from one client describing the work I had helped produce as “amatuer [sic]”, and a second instance where another client described something I had written as (I quote) “girly”.
In both these cases, I am quite proud to say I didn’t take the criticism to heart. When taken in the context of each client neither piece of criticism was justified and indeed, in the second case, the comment was taken back in an email that was sent the following day.
So, is it arrogant of me to automatically assume that the two comments were unjustified?
Well yes and no. To a certain extent, each of us as writers needs to take on a certain amount of, not “arrogance” per se, but more “confidence in one’s abilities”. It may seem like arrogance in one respect as we are all, given what we do, quite sensitive individuals, but at the same time if you want to make it in the world of professional writing, you need to steel yourself against criticism and learn to differentiate between that which is genuine, and that which is merely insult hurling. In the first case given above, I think it’s fair to say that anyone who mis-spells the word “amateur” when describing a writer’s spelling, grammar and punctuation, is perhaps not justified in their comment!
So there we have it – my take on the dreaded C-word. To end this blog in suitably thought-provoking style, I thought I’d leave you with one of my favourite writing-related quotes taken from Matthew Lewis’ The Monk (1796):
An author, whether good or bad, or between both, is an animal whom every body is privileged to attack: for though all are not able to write books, all conceive themselves able to judge them. A bad composition carries with it its own punishment – contempt and ridicule. A good one excites envy, and entails upon its author a thousand mortifications: he finds himself assailed by partial and ill-humoured criticism: one man finds fault with the plan, another with the style, a third with the precept which it strives to inculcate; and they who cannot succeed in finding fault with the book, employ themselves in stigmatizing its author. They maliciously rake out from obscurity every little circumstance which may throw ridicule upon his private character or conduct, and aim at wounding the man since they cannot hurt the writer. In short, to enter the lists of literature is wilfully to expose yourself to the arrows of neglect, ridicule, envy, and disappointment. Whether you write well or ill, be assured that you will not escape from blame.
Until next time,
Mike
which met the criteria. The editors got back to me and said that they loved the story but it didn’t really fit with what they were planning, and suggested some changes. Rather than complaining that they should have been far more specific in the brief I made two re-writes; one which took on board everything that they said (but which I felt ripped the heart out of the story) and one in-between that took their views into account but kept in some of my meat. In the end neither of the versions were used, but I did learn from the experience.
