You know those personalized rejections that totally push your buttons with perfectly well-intentioned compliments that make you feel like you've totally missed the mark?
One of my biggest, reddest, shiniest buttons is being told a piece of writing is conceptually strong, or a great idea, that it is idea-driven (I think one of my least favorite words is clever, it totally makes me twitchy) when I thought I had written something emotionally-driven and honest.
For instance, the other day, I received workshop feedback on a story I believed to be one of the most visceral, deeply felt stories I'd ever written, telling me my prose was "breezy." I flipped my shit a little bit.
...So I'm slumping a little bit this morning over a button-pushing rejection, but I'm glad, because I generally find slumpy moods result in highly productive phases. ...I really don't want to write stories that are anything less than the best versions of themselves they can be, that are good instead of remarkable, and so when I receive the kind of feedback that pushes my buttons, after a brief hour or two of wailing and gnashing and asking, "What do I have to do to write something really truly special? ...Why won't somebody just tell me what single ingredient my work lacks (as if there could ever be one single ingredient, and as if anybody but myself could ever tell me what that ingredient is were such an ingredient to exist)," I remember that what I'm supposed to be doing is developing my own judgement and pushing myself to write more and write better and to travel into the places that are most scary and most vulnerable because these are the places where I most need to locate myself. And then I get back on the horse and work harder and try to kick some ass.
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3 comments:
Horse, Harder, Ass, Yes.
It is important to develop that judgment as a writer but I do understand your frustration. I have been trying lately, as an editor, to be really specific and therefore useful when I do comment on a submission because I think if you're going to say something, make it count or don't say anything at all.
I think specific is great.
I do find that when I'm providing feedback in a workshop-type setting, I often feel that what a piece, especially a very short piece, needs is something really intangible and difficult to name more specifically... just to dig deeper, go further, do something else, something more, which is difficult to tell someone in any useful way and also difficult to hear from a reviewer or editor without going briefly crazy.
...So I get it, I think, why folks are sometimes less specific but still want to offer personalized encouragement.
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