A teenage gymnast was doing miraculous things in the Olympics. Her flexibility and strength were astonishing. The television commentator shrieked something like, “Oh no, she bent her knees on the stutz!” The knees had given a little, but it was amazing that they were still attached to her legs. This brings to mind what Coleridge refers to in Anima Poetae as “the head-dimming, heart-damping principle of judging a work by its defects, not its beauties.” Yes, Olympic commentators must deal with defects, and it is our obligation—when asked—to point out a writer’s botched literary stutzes, but we must never forget the beauties.
Another way to dim the head and dampen the heart of a writer is to react with a dismissive I’ve seen this kind of thing before attitude. Something old to you may have just been born in the writer; be gentle with that baby. Even more problematic is We shouldn’t be seeing this kind of thing again. A poet told me that his first submission to a workshop was greeted with, “I can’t believe that anyone still writes poetry that way.” I can’t believe that anyone would say such a thing.
Flannery O’Connor told students at Hollins College, “Every time a story of mine appears in a freshman anthology, I have a vision of it, with its little organs laid open, like a frog in a bottle.” O’Connor was referring to the tendency of literary criticism to veer more toward dissection than enjoyment, but a former classmate of hers at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Jean Wylder, was “sure she was remembering those Workshop sessions at Iowa.” No matter how supportive the workshop, there are moments when the discussion might feel like dissection, and, unlike an anthologized author, the writer is actually in the room while the examination takes place. But, the critique is not an autopsy, and should be taken in the spirit of “This is how to get that frog hopping.”
When responding to a writer in a “slump,” throwing effusive praise on work that the author knows is inferior could do more harm than good. The best way to un-dim the head and un-dampen the spirit is to accept what is before our eyes and encourage the writer to keep swinging. Willie Mays was batting .477 in the minors when he was called up to the Giants in 1951, where he started out 0 for 12. He tearfully told his manager, Leo Durocher, to bench him or send him back to the minors. Durocher told Mays he wasn’t going anywhere: “Just keep swinging, because you’re my centerfielder, even if you don’t get a hit for the rest of the season.” Mays got a lot of hits and was named rookie of the year (he is now in the Hall of Fame). He later recalled, “I think that really, really turned me around.”
When my wife was in fourth grade, she came across an oversized, illustrated edition of Bambi in the school library. The sprawling pictures of the forest—with their sweeping colors and expressive faces on the animals—enchanted her, and she excitedly cradled the book and went to the desk to check it out. Her teacher stopped her cold with, “Isn’t that a little young for you, dear?” She returned the book and didn’t tell her parents about it, embarrassed that she had selected a childish book. I can picture her expression as she tried to cover up the rebuke she felt. She got over it, and there were many more books for her, but she never quite trusted that teacher again. We must help one another tap into enchanted places, not plug them up so that nothing more can pour forth.
Criticism—no matter how sensitively stated—needs to be administered in appropriate dosages. George Balanchine, commenting on how he responds to dancers, said, “If it’s a young person I let her do it the first time. I don’t tell her everything—it’s impossible to do that. I’ll say, ‘If you do a little bit more turnout, then let’s see what will happen.’ So next time she’ll turn out a little more, and I say, ‘Now you’re looking very good, but that’s not everything. Why don’t you look straight and go this way instead of that way?’ That’s what we do.”
Being critiqued can be painful. For Ernest Hemingway, it was a pain in a specific place: He gave a draft of A Farewell to Arms to F. Scott Fitzgerald, who responded with ten pages of handwritten notes, at the bottom of which Hemingway scrawled his three-word response, “Kiss my ass,” signed “EH.” Robert Benchley was appropriately dismissive (though a bit more civil) when New Yorker editor Harold Ross wrote “Who he?” next to a mention of Andromache. Benchley wrote back, “You keep out of this.” A better role model might be Marcia Davenport, who graciously responded to Maxwell Perkins: “You make the work almost do itself. I think if I had to struggle alone I would give up.”
We have to accept that critical shrapnel might occasionally lodge in authors’ egos. But pre-publication it’s like hearing bad news from an accountant during tax preparation, as opposed to the worse hurt from an IRS auditor. Either way you pay a price, but the latter comes with penalties.
Perhaps writers should go through a workshop boot camp featuring ego-toughening exercises: Recruits take turns reading a piece out loud, interrupted every couple of lines by a chant of “Needs work! Doesn’t work! Needs work! Doesn’t work! Needs work!” Then recruits read what they consider to be the best piece they’ve ever written, and have it be met by silence, paper shuffling, furtive looks at watches, and finally one comment: “It’s easy to read. What font is that?”
A helpful critique may not be pleasurable but it doesn’t have to be unpleasant. I overheard a student after one of my classes being asked how her workshop went. She replied, “I was kicked around the room.” I was about to comfort her when she pumped her fist and added, “It was great.” If you can’t muster such enthusiasm for being kicked around the room, you might think of it this way: If you are trapped in a well and call for help, you don’t want someone to drop down a comfortable chair; you want a rope, even though the climb up won’t be fun for either of you.
Workshops offer multiple comments that often contradict one another. Think of it this way: When you entertain guests at a party, you’re nice to everyone, you listen, you ask and answer questions, and later you decide whom you might like to have lunch with and whom you might not want in your house again. Similarly, “entertain” all suggestions during the critique. Then make your choices.
Even rejected suggestions—if fully considered—can be helpful. One student pointed out that comments she declined to act on “helped me think about what the character is not as well as what she is.” There are rare cases when no substantial changes result from a critique. In the opening credits to Happy Days, Henry Winkler’s Fonzie, comb in hand, looks into the mirror then shrugs, choosing not to alter a hair on his head. But he looks.
Sometimes, no matter how much helpful criticism a piece receives, and how many drafts you put it through, it still doesn’t work. This can be part of the process toward success. The painter Camille Corot wrote in his sketchbook, “One would be wrong to get discouraged after two or three mediocre studies. It is the preparation of the good one that profits, without us noticing so, from this seemingly sterile work.”
adapted from The Writing Workshop Note Book
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