Over on Rara-Avis they've been discussing blurbs, especially blurbs that were written for a first time author. One of the authors who blurbed said that while the book wasn't perfect, he blurbed because the writer was talented and he wanted to support that talent.
Okay, swell, that's a big boost for the new writer's ego, but I wondered, did this writer take the time to tell the beginner where he went wrong in his book and how he could improve his writing? Or is this young writer just going to keep writing the same mistakes because, hey, the big guys said he's great?
Encouraging comments, blurbs, critiques, and reviews can help build a writer's confidence, but they can also hurt a writer in the long run if they're not tempered with a little common sense. How you ask? They can hurt, if the beginning writer comes to the conclusion that he is brilliant and doesn't have to get any better.
How do I know this? Because in one critique group I belonged to, all the feedback I'd get was "Hey, this is great!" Yeah, I could have just kept writing the same old, same old, but I wouldn't have learned anything. I knew that the stories weren't perfect but I wasn't learning how to make them better. So rather than hang around getting my ego stroked, I moved on to a group that tells me when a story is crap and offers suggestions on how to make it better.
Don't get me wrong, I love a good ego boost as well as the next writer, but I always try to remember that I'm still learning, still honing my craft and that's something I hope will never end. As writers we walk a fine line between believing that every story we write is brilliant and the oh-my-god feeling that everything we write is crap. The trick is learning to balance the two. And no it's not something that I've mastered yet.
10 comments:
I used to be like that, thinking that every single story I wrote was the greatest in the world.
Eventually, reality set in (although it took a couple of years), and although it sometimes hurts (just a little), I've learned to take the good with the bad.
I think that's the hardest part for any writer, G. I know it took me a long to time to realize how little I knew about writing.
I remember one "brilliant" story I submitted and the editor wrote back that verbs in a story would move it along a lot better. I used to write in sentence fragments because I thought they were pure genius.
I expect that the writers who continue to learn and improve are the ones who finally achieve a bit of success and feel most comfortable in their writer's skin.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I once had an editor send me a "box of transitions" because I used far too many jump-cuts between scenes (you know: end scene, leave blank line, start new scene).
Because he bought and published my first mystery short story, I was quite willing to learn how to use these new tools.
I just love editors who take the time to help a beginning writer. I've been pretty lucky that way, though I didn't realize at first how valuable their help was.
I had a story rejected this morning and the editor sent along three or four paragraphs about why he was rejecting the story. The up side, he'd asked me to keep him in mind when I had another story. This was a new genre (western) for me so I was grateful for the suggestions.
I love editors who help you to rewrite a story they sort of like. Neil Smith did that for me once and Elaine Ash with a recent story. Tony Black had me cut 500 wrds out of the one at Pulppusher and it was better for it. It takes time but it is almost always a better story for it. Having no real critiquing beyond that, I feel like I am writing in a vacuum most of the time.
Tony is a great editor! I have a habit of telling instead of showing which he pointed out. The story was so much better, and now I make a habit of looking for those tell passages. Don't always catch them, but I try.
I think most of us write in a kind of vacumn. Most of the stories I write never get critiqued first. If an editor asks for changes, I usually make them and the story is always the better for it.
My editor, Michael Carr, provided the blurb on my blog, but I assure you I was informed of my mistakes! The mark-up pages came back like they'd been in a war zone. At first I thought if he liked the story so much why was he pinpointing the mistakes, and then once I took a more relaxed review after Michael had finished the whole edit I could see precisely where I had erred.
Even now I go back to look at those mark-ups to remind myself not to make those errors again. I was too new at the writing game then, and his comments put me into the proper reality. Michael was good about putting in an explanation of why something wasn't working and how a reader might interpret it.
Sounds like you lucked into a great editor, Barbara. I have some pages like that, and rereading them always reminds me of how much I have to learn.
My group is kind, but full of helpful suggestions. Sometimes, though, I wish they'd be harder on me. Other times, I'm grateful they're not. Sigh. Writer egos are pretty fragile. Thanks for a great post.
Welcome to The Corner, Lois! I'd guess our egos are pretty fragile because we pour so much of ourselves into our stories. The closer to home the story, the more fragile the ego.
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