Everyone likes to know their prayers are being answered. "Make me a good writer for You," I said. And in what I thought was an unrelated request, "Make me humble." Ever efficient, the Good Lord immediately found a way to cover both of these areas at once: He just sent me the results of my first fiction-writing critique.
Several weeks ago, I started a course in Christian fiction writing with the Christian Writers Guild and I couldn't be happier with the quality of the text and the challenge of the exercises. My fiction writing, such as it is, has always followed the splatter-gun technique: random descriptions, notes, dialogues, and assorted vignettes splashed on bits of paper and stored in ancient folders I keep shuffling through but can't figure out what to do with. This course is giving me the leverage I need to smush the splatters together into a few good blobs.
My mentor is a very capable and attentive man, but because he has a life of his own, I finally decided (to his great refief, I'm sure) to deploy reinforcements in the form of a critique group through the American Christian Fiction Writers.
For my first trial run in my new crit group, I submitted my latest completed assignment for the CWG, a scene that was intended to reveal as much about my characters as possible without relying on internal monologue or narrative description. This meant writing lots of action and dialogue, which I found to be really fun. My characters and storyline are each just beginning to reveal themselves, and writing a complete scene was rather like jumping off a rooftop and not hitting the ground, but not fully understanding why not. I worked hard on this assignment and I have to confess that I was pretty pleased with myself.
Until I saw my critique. The critter had marked her comments in red and I was blinded when I opened the document. I read through her observations with my heart in my throat. I decided that this woman (who is the published author of an astronomical number of books) didn't understand my style, had no sense of humor, and knew nothing about my subject. I began plotting graceful ways of fading out of the crit group. And I watched doubt begin to spider out like a drop of paint in a glass of water.
Then it dawned on me that God had me precisely where He wanted me.
When I woke up this morning, the first thing on my mind was "Following Christ and learning to write (in that order)." You may notice the change in my blog description. I went back yesterday and reread the critter's observations. I mulled them over for the rest of the day and realized that most of them were very valid and the rest deserved considered attention. In other words, I was finally open to what she had to say. Today I'll write to her and thank her for her good work. Then I'll set to again, learning to write.
Critiquing is never easy, and accepting a critique is worse. We know that both halves of the process are necessary in learning to write--or paint or draw or sculpt or weave. But the most important function a critique serves is in learning to live. I'm not the only one who's ever suffered the blows of correction. This isn't my first critique and it won't be my last. My prayer of thanks today is to those brave souls who are willing to speak the truth about our work when we ask them to. May we remember to take it with grace and humility. It's a gift.
"Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go:
Keep her; for she is thy life."
(Prov. 4:13)
Dear Durga,
Yes, critiques can be a very humbling experience but for this person to have taken the time to even critique your writing when she could be working on her own work says something about your writing to begin with. She wouldn't have invested in it if she didn't see the potential she saw in your writing. Ignoring and not even saying anything to help you improve would have been the greatest destructive critique. So I say "WoW!" you are going in the correct direction. I'm so glad you went back the 2nd time and gleened such wealth from the critique. You keep going on and trusting God, He will make it all good.
Care in Jesus, Victoria on Okinawa<><>
Posted by: Victoria on Okinawa | September 03, 2006 at 08:18 AM