Once, in an undergrad workshop, a young lady responded to some particularly harsh and pointed criticism by saying that she had had her mother read over the piece, that her mother normally read at least a herculean ten novels per week and thus knew her word craft, and that her beloved momma had enjoyed the story. ERGO by a simple syllogism, we were to be persuaded that this particular short story was in fact literary gold.
There were a few problems with this story (the one she told to explain the one we read, which also had problems, naturally). For one, who reads ten novels a week? It’s possible, and it’s certainly what I’d rather be doing with my time than what I do now, but such a vigorous reading schedule wholly precludes any sort of professional or personal life outside of reading. For another, lots of people like lots of things, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re any good, and likewise if you’re work appeals to that person, it could just mean that it’s more of the same old crap that this person likes. It didn’t take but a moment to figure out that the novels this dear girl’s mother consumed so voraciously were the most dreadful of the pulp bodice rippers, Fabio-bedecked pink-covered word-trash fit only for lining the cage of a hated parakeet, which brings us to the point:
A loving life-giver, a supportive healer, a caring nurturer; your mother is a lot of things, but she is not a literary critic.
(Having said this, someone out there has a mother who is, in fact, a literary critic / publisher / creative writing professor, etc, and right now they’re pushing their glasses up and saying “Umm, excuse me? But like, you don’t know me, and you don’t know what I’ve been through, and who are you to…” and I will say to them: BAAAWWWW, because no matter how talented your mom is, no matter how many Pushcart prizes she’s won, and despite the number of classy black-and-white photos wherein she stares forlornly off into the horizon or intensely into the camera, she is the last person qualified to give you a read.)
Understand that when I say “mom” here, she is also interchangeable with “best friend,” “girlfriend,” “guy at kinkos who puts up with your incoherent babbling because he’s running your copy job,” and “other douchebag writing on his laptop next to you at Starbucks.” Those people nearest you are the last people you should ask for serious criticism.
Your friends are your friends for a reason: they’re supportive, they’re fun to be around, and when you go through that big breakup with the one you thought was the one, they’re there to change you out of those frumpy work clothes, get you up off the couch and away from that pint of Haagen Dazs, and make you dance, DANCE! So understandably they’re going to apply this same you go girl! attitude to anything you show them. They’re going to love how real your characters are, and they’re going to tell you that they didn’t know what was going to happen right up until the end, and then they will compare your work to a list of writers that they might have heard of, and you will be just dizzy with warm, fuzzy affirmation.
Which, of course, is a huge disservice to you because your current draft sucks crap through a straw, and someone needs to tell you. That’s not even me being mean – unless you have some insane ability to objectively remove yourself from your work (you don’t) and a keen critical eye to boot (you haven’t), then you probably need external criticism of some sort, and of all the people in the world, you are asking those least critical of you.
A workshop can help whip you into shape so long as you can take all criticism with a grain of salt. Your fellow workshop attendees are not publisher-quality proofreaders, and you might remember that they are not there to read, they are there to be read. The odds are that you’re in the same boat, in which case you all deserve the hell out of each other. If you’ve got some super-attentive hard-working suck up in your class, you might get one good read per submission, but that’s a mighty big if.
You can find a mentor, of course, but that pretty much involves latching on to the university teat, which in turn involves a lot of workshopping and a lot of sucking up, not to mention a lot of cash. Still, it’s a good investment if you’re able to get the attention of an older and more accomplished author who is willing to bring you up as an apprentice.
But there’s one sure-fire way to improve your writing that doesn’t involve sitting around in a circle with a bunch of self-centered assholes OR a bajillion dollars in crippling student loan bills: read. Read every day. Try to read ten novels a week – you’ll fall terribly short, but in shooting for that goal you will be doing more good for your writing than a thousand writer’s retreats. A mentor might coach your style and give you advice, but with just a few trips to the library, you can have thousands of mentors pouring years and years of experience right into your eager ears and filling up the vacuous expanse there between.
The most common rebuke I hear to this bit of advice is: “but I think if I read too much then it’s going to take over my voice,” to which reply; snowflake, precious, princess, baby cupcake sweetheart, we’ve already established that you suck. My old professor Dave Hickey cut right to the heart of the matter: if you read Tender is the Night and suddenly start writing like Scott Fitzgerald, then you have done yourself one hell of a favor. Go forth, read, write, and stop bugging your momma – she’s on her second novel of the day.
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