The Critique Masochist
As an art school veteran, I am no stranger to criticism. When I create something, I not only expect critique, I immediately crave it. Critique is necessary, it’s useful, it is required. And the more brutal the better. In essence, I have become a critique masochist. How could this have happened? Let me explain.
Art majors at the college level spend their week something like this… Monday through Thursday are filled with studio classes–three hour sessions of drawing and/or painting in the classroom. Sometimes, it’s a clever arrangement of old knickknacks, vases, and Styrofoam balls and sometimes an assortment of nude models which is not nearly as exciting as you might imagine when you’re trying to get the lines right.
Friday, however, is critique day. On Friday, you gather your week’s work, tack it to a wall, and wait for the guns to start firing at you. You learn to love Fridays or you aren’t going to be in art school very long. Freshmen feared the week’s end. Those with tenuous egos invented reasons to be ill on Friday. You could try to dodge, but no matter how clever you were, eventually, it was your work on the wall.
There were only two rules in a peer critique and they are very good ones. First, you must remain absolutely silent while your work is being trashed–er, examined. Second, a critic may not say “I like it” or “I don’t like it” unless the statement is immediately followed by a detailed explanation of “WHY”.
Fridays were fun days in the school of art. If someone wasn’t crying in the halls between classes, it wasn’t Friday. I’m serious. People fled critique day, people sobbed. Some stomped straight to administration and switched majors. But, no matter how you look at it, Friday was a good day. It was Friday that turned me into a critique masochist.
So, back to writing…and critique. Critique is a good thing. It is the single most vital tool to becoming the best at any creative endeavor. We cannot be our own critic. We can try, and please do try. It’s required, you HAVE to learn to look at your work objectively. On the flip side, you will never, ever be as objective as your reader in Connecticut who’s never met you. Seek out the guns. Please. As you do, remember a few things to nurse a happy relationship with criticism. It will find you eventually anyway. If not before publication, then after.
DETACH: Your work may be your baby, but it’s not your baby. Any discussion of your work is not a personal attack. It is not your job to protect it. It is your job to let it be ripped to shreds and reassembled into something better, and golden, and closer to perfect.
EGO AWAY: Put it in a box, lock it in its room, whatever. Your ego will be needed later (when the rejections roll in and make you want to quit) but while receiving and giving criticism, it’s dead weight and will only botch up the whole process.
LISTEN: With both ears and the whole mind. Listen and consider the slim possibility that the critic may be right. Don’t waste time disagreeing or mentally arguing, listen. Listen and pretend they’re a genius–just for now.
SALT: When you have listened, considered and absorbed, THEN remember the grain of salt. This is an opinion–one person’s opinion or a whole class’ opinion, but still an opinion. Do you agree with it? Try. If not, stick to your guns and trust that you know your own goals. Don’t ever think that a suggestion is a rule, that you must change and adapt to every criticism or you will never stop fixing and changing things back and forth. Do change what you agree with. Do give serious thought to any suggestion that comes up more than once, or over and over again from different sources. But in the end, you decide.
Remember the two rules–they are good ones. Don’t interrupt. Never argue during the critique. If anyone ever says, “I like it” or “I don’t like it” insist on a detailed “why.” Embrace the horror–that is, the process– and learn to love it. Laugh at your mistakes and yourself often. Eventually, you might find yourself craving it, needing it. Personally, I’m suspicious of anyone who reads my work and doesn’t pick it apart, at least a little. Don’t trust the “I loved it” or the “It’s great” without further discussion! With a little practice, you too can be a critique masochist.
This post first appeared on Speculative Friction.
Furry Writers’ Guild 
On the flip side, you will never, ever be as objective as your reader in Connecticut whose never met you.
^who hasn’t^
sorry, couldn’t resist,
or ^who’s never met you^
Missed that. >_< Thanks!
Many thanks for the catch. 🙂
When one considers why one writes, and moreover for whom,and to whom one writes in this fandom, there are many problems with the tired old bromides about standard literary criticism.
This article assumes that there is some sort of community among them. Also taken for granted is the belief that most “Furry” Authors are capable of taking and learning from well constructed critiques.
Both are false assumptions, and both demolish any hope of bringing reason to critique of anthropomorphic fiction.
The vast majority who write in this fandom are no more interested in well founded literary critique than they are in the difference between a conjunctive clause and a dangling particle. Most of them have no more knowledge of Plot, Character, Counterpoint, Conflict, and Resolution than your average two-year old has a grasp of microbiology.
Remember that the vast body of what is branded as “Furry writing” comes stapled to a license for bargain basement pornography, so broad as to over arch all else. It is taken as a license to do anything one desires, in any way, shape, manner. or form that is found pleasant to the glandular secretions of an audience. An audience whose founding Idea of critique is to count how many orgasms they had while reading the “literature” in question.
This is a fine bit of writing as far as it goes, among people with the brains and experience to process it.
Any clinging hope that anything said here will change the way that the fandom views the finer points of literary critique is useless. The aspiration that anything like this article will profoundly alter the methods used to formulate all of those pithy one sentience masterworks of critical thought is noble, but in the end, this fine effort is simply wasted. It is lost in the same manner as gems cast into the mud of the pharaonic brick pits.
The vast majority of our members, though — including yourself, obviously — are interested in well-founded literary critique, and this blog is also for their benefit.
I sympathize with your points, but frankly, they feel a little outdated from where I’m sitting. It’s true that the vast majority of writers in the fandom aren’t writing anywhere near a professional level, and that many of them aren’t even concerned about writing beyond it just being a way to participate in the fandom. The same could be said, though, of plenty of people writing in other genres, and we don’t throw out the whole genre just because there are less experienced writers calling themselves part of it.
If you spend some time on our forums and maybe also read some of what’s been published in the fandom in the last few years particularly, I think you may find more writers than you expect who are concerned with the finer points this article touches on, and who do have the brains and experience you speak of. Perhaps more time spent among your fellow members would leave you feeling a bit more optimistic about furry fiction in general. 🙂
–Renee (Poetigress)
As Renee points out beautifully, the guild itself is living proof of the desire from the genre for quality writing. In my short time rubbing shoulders with these folks, I have noted nothing but the strong desire to write well and do the genre justice, to improve and grow.
I’ve seen members and non-members trading beta reads and feedback, and if that isn’t a community that is interested in supporting each other with critique and improving, I don’t know what is.
I’ve also discovered within the genre, that there is already a wealth of really stellar writing. It already exists. Maybe not everywhere or every story, but I challenge the assumption that these folks whom I hope to continue becoming more closely associated with aren’t interested in critique and literary quality.
I have witnessed far too much of the exact opposite.
And in wider literary circles, I’m sure you’ll agree, the other genres have no shortage of poor writing and writers who have no time or interest in critique.
Everyone has to start somewhere.