Tag: rejection

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Answering Critics

Everyone’s a critic. Everyone has an opinion. And of course, everyone’s entitled to their opinion.

But what happens when a critic or a reviewer or a book club member reads your book and doesn’t like it? What do you do when you read a cutting review of the book you toiled over for months (or years)?

Novelist Alice Hoffman had a book release in 2009 called The Story Sisters. She received a less-than-glowing review by The Boston Globe’s Roberta Silman. Unfortunately Hoffman wasn’t able to dismiss the review as one person’s opinion and move on. Gawker, an Internet gossip site captured all the dirty details. Lashing out on Twitter, Hoffman posted 27 Tweets in response to that review, including posting the contact information for Silman in hopes that Hoffman’s fans would call the reviewer out on the carpet.

I wonder if Ms. Hoffman is wishing she could take back her words. Well, actually — if she could take back her Tweets. I think that the answer to that is a resounding yes because her Twitter page is no longer online.

Very few writers please all the critics all the time, and most likely there is no writer who’s ever accomplished that feat. But the issue lies in how you deal with the criticism. It’s tough to receive negative feedback whether you’re a yet-to-be published author or one who’s had several books printed.

Some strategies to deal with the disappointment?

Call your agent/editor/mother/spouse/best friend/significant other and vent your frustration. Go for a walk. Write something. Take a nap. Write a private email to your critic if you must. Still, if the last option is your choice, first give it a day or two, and consider praying about the words you’ll deliver.

But don’t go and lose it online.

Perhaps the best course of action for Ms. Hoffman would have been to say nothing. What’s accomplished in slamming the reviewer for her words? It just doesn’t look professional, even if you think the other party acted poorly.

Author Angela Hunt cautions writers to never answer a critic publicly. That sounds like good advice. Too bad Ms. Hoffman didn’t receive such counsel.

Want a laugh? Here’s one author’s humorous response to criticism.

What’s your advice to someone suffering the sting of criticism or rejection?

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My First Rejection: the Twenty Year Ache

I received my first manuscript request in fourth grade.

My teacher invited me and another student to write a short story. The prize for the winning submission was breathtaking: a trip to a young writer’s workshop, where we would learn from real writers and hobnob with kids who, like me, dreamed secret stories deep in our young hearts.

For a ten year old, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. I poured myself into my story, sparing no imaginative fancy. I don’t remember many details, only that it featured talking animals, a charging knight, and puppy love romance. I thought it was spectacular, one of a kind. I submitted my story and waited for the happy news.

A few days later, the teacher called me to her desk. Her soft, sympathetic voice set my knees to trembling. Why did she sound sad? Didn’t she have good news to deliver? “I’m sorry,” she said.  She’d chosen the other student’s story, a vignette about a visit to grandma’s house.

Oh, that rejection hurt. I cast green eyes at the winner and felt sick the day he attended the workshop. While he worked with grown-up writers, I solved math problems and filled out worksheets, just like every other school day.

If I’d been a stronger, more self-assured child, I might have pondered that grandma story. I might have learned the first adage of beginning writers: “write what you know”. I might have considered the fact that readers can relate to a visit to grandma’s, but no one can relate to talking ducks, fanciful knights, and puppy love. . .all in a single-page story.

I might have, but I didn’t. Instead, my young writer’s heart sported a big, throbbing bruise. But I didn’t talk about my writing, not to anyone.  So I came to my own conclusion: I wasn’t good enough. And that was that.

I couldn’t stop writing, though. I wrote poems and journal entries, short stories and personal narratives. I wrote frantically, then tore my words to shreds. Sometime I tucked my writing under my bed or in pages of childhood books, never to be seen again, even by me.

Meanwhile, I learned to deliver what my teachers wanted. An essay with a topic sentence and three paragraphs? Done. A summary of The Grapes of Wrath? Done. I earned good grades, but protected my writer’s heart with layers of bricks and barbed wire constructed from that fourth grade rejection.

I protected too dearly, and finally stopped writing all together. For twenty years I wrote nothing but grocery lists until, a few years ago, the writing exploded out of me with all the force of a long-dormant volcano.

Predictably, I still face rejection on this road to publication. But I don’t hide my words or tear them up anymore. I expect the hurt of rejection. I even embrace it, if I can. Because I understand now: the best stories come from bruised and throbbing hearts that don’t hide, don’t shred, and refuse to give up.

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Can You See Your Lion?

Recently I read that antelopes in captivity are not only healthier, but more reproductive when they can see and smell lions, their primary predator. I found such an observation fascinating. Does that mean a bit of stress makes an antelope’s life better?

Which of course led me to consider what a completely stress-free life would look like. Heaven? Or . . . boring? Evidently the antelopes are in the second camp. So boring, in fact, they find little reason to live a productive life without a reminder of some of life’s challenges.

As an author, I took some odd comfort in that. What writer, at any stage in their career, lives without stress? Maybe stress, at least in a manageable dose, isn’t such a bad thing after all.

Let’s face it, if getting published—or staying published—was stress-free then everyone would be doing it. But it’s neither easy nor stress-free. While the self-esteem movement wants everyone to be a winner (and undoubtedly there is something good about reminding us of our value) the bottom line is all of us do lose at one time or another. What accomplishment can we celebrate if every time we set out to do something we succeeded? Either our bar is too low or we’re fooling ourselves, because grown ups face disappointment all the time. In fact, overcoming stress and the accompanying feeling of failure make our successes all the sweeter.

All of this has me considering stress in a new light. I’m not saying all stress is good, or too much stress is good. Maybe there’s a difference between good stress and bad stress, although to an antelope I can’t figure out what’s good about having a lion in the neighborhood. Maybe if we don’t have some lions to look at in our distance—a reminder of the challenges that are out there—we might not have a reason to grow and improve. Maybe without those lions looming we might not even want to get up in the morning.

So next time you’re rushing to meet a deadline, or you receive a rejection, a disappointing contest result or a bad review, remind yourself without these lions in your life, living would be too dull to matter. At least that’s what the antelopes think.

What about you? Is there a fine line between good stress and bad? At what point do the lions in your life make you want to try harder, grow and improve before feeling there are too many lions in your life?

Note: Lion Photo compliments of Amanda Neilson, Neilson House Photography