I will tell you a secret

About me and constructive criticism.

On the one hand, I love it. I love to know that people have engaged with my work; that they’re not letting me rest on my laurels; that they and I share a worldview and an understanding that striving to improve is a positive thing. I love it when I can see that my critter’s right, and they’ve made a point that washes over me like the rising dawn. Epiphanies! Yes, if I did that, it would be better! Whether editing with a light hand, or taking in larger, overarching changes that I can apply wholly to a later work, the right criticism at the right time can feel like it’s sharpening my vision and broadening my horizons, both at once. I will always ask for concrit on my fiction. I will always be grateful when I receive it. I will always be sad when someone whose opinion I trust isn’t willing, for whatever reason, to trust me enough to know that I’ll take their comments well.

But on the other hand, concrit can be intensely, painfully difficult to receive. I would suggest that’s part of how you know it’s legitimate criticism! If I’ve been flamed, I can dress in my asbestos point-and-laugh suit and shrug it off. But when there’s a genuine problem with my work, something I haven’t thought of or something I’ve handled poorly, and someone has cogently and unstintingly detailed exactly how I’ve missed the mark, that is hard for me to deal with. I have to go away and lock myself in my Fortress of Poutitude for a while. (I never respond to such a comment, which I value, when I’m feeling low about it–I wait until I can read it with equanimity and respond to it fairly.) A lot of advice to writers relates to putting on their big girl panties and growing a thicker skin, but I think what we don’t hear enough of is “Get yourself a Fortress of Poutitude, make sure it’s well soundproofed, fill it with punching bags, and if you ever need to scream about how the world’s unfair to your special snowflakeness, for gods’ sake do it there.”

Generally, having been in solid practice for the past decade as a member of Calgary’s Imaginative Fiction Writers’ Association, I can look at criticism of my fiction after only a short break to indulge my own betrayed bogglement that my story hasn’t immediately been hailed as the next Great Canadian Novel. However, in the realm of Academe, I’m still struggling with this bit of personal growth. The best professor I ever had in terms of learning to write a term paper and actually growing from my mistakes was Michele Gunderson, who taught me Critical Literary Theory (ENGL 302) at the University of Calgary. (Class of 2009 represent!) We wrote drafts and went through peer review in class. Professor Gunderson taught me the importance of the question, “So what?” Le Guin believes that heroism is gendered–so what? Utopias present gender segregation and homosociality as an ideal–so what? It was revelatory! Essays had a purpose. They did more than spew back what we’d been taught; they were, in themselves, forms of activism. Keeping that question in mind has driven my papers farther, kept the momentum of my argument aimed where I wanted it. Part of my desire to continue into postgraduate studies comes from that knowledge.

Still, it doesn’t make criticism any easier to take. The process of writing my ethics proposal (a process so apparently interminable it certainly deserves a post of its own) has been one of the most difficult tasks I’ve undertaken in terms of what I’ve learned this year at the University of Liverpool. I’ve had to learn to write professional proposals promptly, to respond to criticism both on the fly orally and with very brief turnaround times in terms of my writing. There is simply no time to lounge about in my Fortress and blink puppydog eyes at the world for failing to accommodate my obvious genius. Nevertheless, every time I open another request for updates and edits, it can’t help but be disheartening. I think perhaps the best thing four rounds of edits has given me is the knowledge that academia will always be like this, and eventually I will be as blithe with my academic concrit as I am with the appraisals of my fiction.

But for my own sake, if no one else’s, I know I’ll be keeping up my Fortress of Poutitude. Everyone needs a retreat sometimes, and the occasional indulgence in the belief that we are above all reproach. We simply can’t bring that attitude with us back to the real world.