On June 12, 2010, Erin Edwards wrote, How do you cope with revision requests\/suggestions, or did you never have a problem with them? Do you find that they were easier or harder to take after you got a contract or had a book published?<\/i><\/p>\n
When I was starting out and hadn\u2019t yet tried my hand at a novel and all my picture book manuscripts were being rejected, I wrote one that garnered editorial interest. The story was about a girl, maybe four years old, miserable when bedtime came and her parents were having a party for grownups. Awake in bed, she decided to dress up as an old lady and crash the party. She did and was the life of it.<\/p>\n
In the story I didn\u2019t say whether or not the adults were onto her, and editors didn\u2019t know what to do with the ambiguity. I received editorial suggestions that I attempted to follow in revisions. One editor even met with me. He talked about \u201cwarm storytelling\u201d and suggested I read Jon Scieszka\u2019s The True Story of the Three Little Pigs<\/i>, which I dutifully did (it’s great!). Afterward, I felt that I had an epiphany and really learned something about craft, rewrote the story in a state of great excitement, submitted it – and this editor hated it.<\/p>\n
With each revision, the charm of my original story melted away and I couldn\u2019t get it back. Finally, I saw it was permanently lost and stopped submitting it.<\/p>\n
However, nothing like this has ever happened to me since. I included the anecdote because it can happen, and when it does, it’s really sad. Maybe the trouble in this case was that the story hung on that gossamer thread between adult belief and disbelief. Possibly it would have resolved itself if the editors had left the uncertainty to an illustrator to interpret.<\/p>\n
Again when I was starting out, I joined critique group after critique group (they tended to fall apart after a while) and I kept taking writing classes. In my first critique group we were all beginners and none of us knew what we were doing. We just offered each other what we could, at that point more as readers than writers. I decided that I should try all criticism. If a suggestion didn\u2019t work, I could go back.<\/p>\n
But usually they did work, and I learned.<\/p>\n
A friend of mine had a brain injury that has left her with limited ability to hold onto new memories. She can\u2019t hear a fact and remember it, but she can still learn by repetition, by doing, through something called implicit learning<\/i>. We all learn some things implicitly, like how to ride a bike or how to swim, and I think most writing learning is implicit. For example, I may read that writers should vary their sentence structures, but just reading the words and remembering them isn\u2019t enough. I have to try out the suggestion in a mechanical way many times before the practice becomes part of the way I write.<\/p>\n
Before I got published I took a writing class that I loved and repeated again and again. Bunny Gabel, our marvelous teacher, who has since retired, conducted the class as a workshop. At the end of every class we would drop our week\u2019s writing on her desk. By the next week she would have picked a chapter of a novel or an entire picture book of three students to read aloud. She wouldn\u2019t identify the writer, and when she finished, the class would weigh in, constructively of course. At the end of the student comments, she\u2019d give her own. The writer was not supposed to speak, just to listen. In the years I took the class nobody ever broke the code.<\/p>\n
Just listening works well under any circumstance. If we explain or defend, the criticism doesn\u2019t penetrate. We need to sit with it before we understand its value – or worthlessness.<\/p>\n
In class, the level of the criticism was high. A bunch of the students were published and most of the class were repeaters like me. At the beginning of every semester, Bunny laid out how the class worked, and she always said that any and all comments could be entirely wrong. For me, sometimes they were. The class was hearing a chapter only, so occasionally they couldn\u2019t judge. Luckily, some of my classmates were in a critique group with me, and I could ask them if an opinion was off-base.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m better now at knowing which criticism is worth listening to and which isn\u2019t. Experience has made me better. Writing is weird, and I think it\u2019s that implicit learning. Every book is a different challenge, and what I learned on my last book may not apply to my next. I feel like a perpetual beginner, and I am, because we learn to write for as long as we do write. At the same time, I have attained some mastery – and I owe a lot of it to that class and to other criticism I\u2019ve gotten along the way. I learned the advice implicitly by doing, and now the voices of my fellow students whisper as I work, Am I revealing feelings? Can the reader see what\u2019s going on? Have I remembered the other senses in addition to sight? Am I writing ideas in order?<\/i><\/p>\n
So how to tell if criticism is on target? In your comments on the blog I see that many of you are good critics of your own work; you know what your weaknesses are. When someone criticizes an aspect you know is difficult for you, that\u2019s criticism to believe. If more than one person identifies the same problem, you probably should pay attention. If someone fails to understand something you wrote, that is worth looking at. In fact, when a reader says she\u2019s confused, her confusion may be the most useful criticism of all.<\/p>\n
One of the things I love about writing for kids is that there are standards. One can judge. Someone can really tell me what\u2019s wrong with my story. For example, there isn\u2019t enough tension, or the story is too long, or my main character is annoying in a bad way.<\/p>\n
But when I used to paint there didn\u2019t seem to be an objective standard and, maybe as a consequence, I never found my way. If I visit a show of contemporary art and see badly drawn images I can\u2019t tell if that\u2019s the artist\u2019s intent or if he\u2019s a lousy draftsman. I love art and my taste is broad, but sometimes I\u2019m clueless.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve mentioned that I\u2019ve gotten very interested in poetry. Last night I was working on a poem and making extra spaces between words and lines for a certain effect. I\u2019m not sure if I was being too obvious or doing something good, and I don\u2019t know if anyone can tell me or, even if another poet has an opinion, if that opinion is valid. Much as I love poetry, this makes me uneasy. In kids\u2019 books something is right or it isn\u2019t. Poets can actually use incorrect grammar on purpose and that\u2019s okay. Aaa!<\/p>\n
In our writing, the only kinds of criticism we need to be wary of are global criticism as in, You\u2019re not much of a writer, dear<\/i>, and harping criticism that isn\u2019t meant to help. If someone insults your writing, don\u2019t show it to that person again. No second chances, in my opinion. And if someone nitpicks and you come to understand the nitpicker doesn\u2019t mean your writing well, cut that connection too. The person can still be your best friend, but not your writing buddy.<\/p>\n
And the only recipient of criticism who needs to be very careful is the writer who is already too hard on herself. If that\u2019s you, cultivate kindness to yourself. When you show your work for criticism, warn the person that you\u2019re fragile. This is okay to do. You in particular may misunderstand and think that what you\u2019re being told is worse than it really is. Double check to make sure you understand. Ask, if you need to, if your critic thinks you should trash your story – before jumping to the conclusion that that\u2019s exactly what he does think.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m almost at the end and I haven\u2019t talked about how getting criticism changes once one is published or accepted for publication. It changes enormously, and the answer segues into working with an editor, which I think is worth a whole post, so I\u2019ll continue next week.<\/p>\n
The only prompt is to be brave and show your work to other writers, to friends who are big readers, to teachers, librarians. If you\u2019re not accustomed to doing this, observe yourself as you take in the comments that come back. Write down what you need to remember. Don\u2019t argue. Work on developing a thick skin. Then return to your computer and try out the edits, being sure to save your earlier drafts.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, keep writing, save everything, and have fun!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On June 12, 2010, Erin Edwards wrote, How do you cope with revision requests\/suggestions, or did you never have a problem with them? Do you find that they were easier or harder to take after you got a contract or had a book published? When I was starting out and hadn\u2019t yet tried my hand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[155,231],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":483,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions\/483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}