I've become a senior citizen, and I wish in some ways I was becoming more calloused with age. Sometimes I have a hard time separating my work from my ego. And here again, my fault was that I took our guest's criticism personally. She was not to blame for how I felt. It's just that our guest didn't "get it", didn't get the high comedy of, say, comparing a ballerina's precise and delicate move to a dog lifting its leg at a fire hydrant. I'm sure she understood why the analogy was supposed to be funny, but she didn't seem to feel it was funny. Our guest acknowledged that she didn't like the use of metaphors in prose. Different strokes for different folks, I suppose. But that comment took me aback. I found her abhorrence of metaphors strange and, well, kind of worrisome, too.
I keep coming back to the group, first, to keep me going, and second, to get help. This can be a risky business if the ego plays too big a part in the process, as though every word is sewn like a golden thread in a weave of self worth. But now that I've lived with Anna and Reginald for more than a month, and with the help of group members (and my daughter), I can see the story's many flaws. Mission accomplished: I wrote, I shared, I improved. And truth be known, it was mainly a fellow group member's enthusiasm for Part One that launched me into Part Two.
I keep coming back to the group, first, to keep me going, and second, to get help. This can be a risky business if the ego plays too big a part in the process, as though every word is sewn like a golden thread in a weave of self worth. But now that I've lived with Anna and Reginald for more than a month, and with the help of group members (and my daughter), I can see the story's many flaws. Mission accomplished: I wrote, I shared, I improved. And truth be known, it was mainly a fellow group member's enthusiasm for Part One that launched me into Part Two.
The point is: I experienced nothing hurtful in this discovery of flaws. For as long as help comes from a place of support, help is granted. The primal prerequisite for supportive criticism in any writing group, or any support group for that matter, is the mutual celebration of the writer's heart. All is well when criticism simultaneously adores the writer.
But when criticism is felt as rejection, creativity gets as backed up as an L.A. freeway during rush hour, as a public toilet in a, in a… Anyway, I've thought long and hard about my wildly different reactions to criticism. We sensitive types can't abide when it feels like rejection, but we flourish when criticism feels like togetherness, as though we're all struggling bozos on this bus, the criticizer and the criticized alike.
After a meeting a year ago, I drove home feeling depressed. I had written a satirical piece following the Republican victory in the mid-term elections, and, well, the group was none too supportive. After I thought about it, I saw that their negativity had nothing to do with the writing itself or the seemingly clever way I structured it. Their negativity was a response to my own negativity. It's hard to support a voice that lashes out in anger and seems hell-bent on destruction.
It seems the only way I would have driven home happy that day is if the group had read my story, then had become so aroused by my words that they stormed onto Front Street with burning torches and chanted en-masse anti-right wing slogans. But no, theirs was an icy response to a fiery expression of outrage. Which is not to say, of course, that there's no place for outrage. But the writer, full of venom though he may be, has also to be persuasive if his writing is to "work". On the other hand, if our group consisted entirely of aged and disaffected radicals from the 60s, why, my work may have been hailed as an anthem for a lost generation.
Which leads me to the problem of compulsive masturbating. About two years ago, a man afflicted by this condition joined the group. His therapist had apparently recommended that he find an outlet for expressing and thus exorcising his pent up disturbances. Writing might do the trick. Oh, and how he did express them, I'm afraid, in vivid detail. It would not have mattered, it seems, if his writing spoke with the wisdom and eloquence of Dickens -- it was simply impossible for the group to cherish his heart when his words spewed forth in a torrent of pornographic violence. We're all in if we can relate somehow. And after one meeting, he was not so much rejected as kindly asked to seek help in a more appropriate venue.
Our group exists to help writers become better writers, not to unkink the knots of those with emotional malfunctions. The need for approval, that yearning for acceptance, the siren call of an unrequited ego -- if these struggles raise their ugly little heads, they're best dealt with on the long ride home. It is then that you counsel yourself: separate the work from the self, separate the work from the self. After all, they're just words. There's no blood in them.
But when criticism is felt as rejection, creativity gets as backed up as an L.A. freeway during rush hour, as a public toilet in a, in a… Anyway, I've thought long and hard about my wildly different reactions to criticism. We sensitive types can't abide when it feels like rejection, but we flourish when criticism feels like togetherness, as though we're all struggling bozos on this bus, the criticizer and the criticized alike.
After a meeting a year ago, I drove home feeling depressed. I had written a satirical piece following the Republican victory in the mid-term elections, and, well, the group was none too supportive. After I thought about it, I saw that their negativity had nothing to do with the writing itself or the seemingly clever way I structured it. Their negativity was a response to my own negativity. It's hard to support a voice that lashes out in anger and seems hell-bent on destruction.
It seems the only way I would have driven home happy that day is if the group had read my story, then had become so aroused by my words that they stormed onto Front Street with burning torches and chanted en-masse anti-right wing slogans. But no, theirs was an icy response to a fiery expression of outrage. Which is not to say, of course, that there's no place for outrage. But the writer, full of venom though he may be, has also to be persuasive if his writing is to "work". On the other hand, if our group consisted entirely of aged and disaffected radicals from the 60s, why, my work may have been hailed as an anthem for a lost generation.
Which leads me to the problem of compulsive masturbating. About two years ago, a man afflicted by this condition joined the group. His therapist had apparently recommended that he find an outlet for expressing and thus exorcising his pent up disturbances. Writing might do the trick. Oh, and how he did express them, I'm afraid, in vivid detail. It would not have mattered, it seems, if his writing spoke with the wisdom and eloquence of Dickens -- it was simply impossible for the group to cherish his heart when his words spewed forth in a torrent of pornographic violence. We're all in if we can relate somehow. And after one meeting, he was not so much rejected as kindly asked to seek help in a more appropriate venue.
Our group exists to help writers become better writers, not to unkink the knots of those with emotional malfunctions. The need for approval, that yearning for acceptance, the siren call of an unrequited ego -- if these struggles raise their ugly little heads, they're best dealt with on the long ride home. It is then that you counsel yourself: separate the work from the self, separate the work from the self. After all, they're just words. There's no blood in them.
