Wednesday, February 18, 2009
1st Class Critique
As I sat in my writing fiction class today I began to think of all of the mistake I might have made with my story that was about to be critiqued. I felt my stomach turn, and I immediately wished I would have left the dialogue out, or perhaps changed the entire story. As the comments began and continued however I felt my anxieties slip away. Most of the comments weren't exactly "positive" in that they praised my story, but I greatly appreciated that. The last thing I wanted was for people to lie to me. I got a lot of great feedback, and most of the comments answered several questions that popped into my mind as I was writing the piece. Instead of feeling discouraged and beaten, I rather felt refreshed. I'm excited for future drafts, and how I might learn to improve my writing.
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When it comes to workshop critiques of my work, I learned the truth of Neitzsche's famous quote, "In the war school of life, that which doesn't kill us makes us stronger." Aside from giving feedback and providing lessons about craft, getting critiqued fills an even more important purpose: it thickens our skins. And writers need to have thick skins. We need to learn, above all, not to take criticism or even the work that we do personally, but to see ourselves as equivalent to carpenters or other tradesmen, building things out of words. If a carpenter builds a shelf, and the shelf turns out to be warped, he builds another until he gets it right.
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