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Blog #4 Don’t Use Criticism As A Razor
It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.
– Ernest Hemingway
I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged.
– Erica Jong
There’s a scene in the film Betty Blue (I can’t remember if it’s in the book), where the eponymous heroine uses a comb to attack a publisher who has rejected her lover’s magnum opus with a brutally critical letter. As a negotiating tactic it failed, but at least it allowed Betty to let off steam – and Betty (as embodied perfectly by Beatrice Dalle) was a lady who needed to let off steam.
Criticism is the cliched, double-edged sword (a cliche I intend to stretch into a messy metallic metaphor) and the wise writer should be wary of both of its edges. Much criticism is entirely subjective and subjective opinions can be heavy and unwieldy.
Would you try to shave (face or legs) with something as unwieldy as a sword? No? Then why would you use a single piece of criticism to determine whether your latest project was the work of a genius or an idiot/dork/Frank Spencer/Homer Simpson/Pike from Dad’s Army (delete as age appropriate).
It’s a hard lesson for new writers, but: NOT EVERYBODY WILL LIKE, OR ENJOY WHAT YOU WRITE. Not when you start out, not when you have initial success, not when you are the writer of a global spanning, theme park spawning phenomenon.
Carrie by Stephen King was rejected 30 times, Frank Herbert’s Dune was rejected 23 times and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was rejected 12 times and Jo Rowling told ‘not to quit the day job’.
Even now the boy wizard isn’t immune to criticism. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone has 47 reviews at a (Ron) measly 1* on Amazon (this is my favourite rant which is nothing to do with the book!). This isn’t holding back JK’s career or stopping her earnings, estimated at US$1 billion (more than the GDP of The Gambia).
When I first moved to London, I enrolled in an evening script writing class in Brixton. This was a pre-gentrification Brixton of families, students and squats. A place where you emerged from the tube amidst clouds of incense, hectored by a Baptist preacher’s barked eschatological threats. A place of underground bars and live music before the Academy was branded with anything other than its location. It was like entering another world and I loved it.
The script writing course was attended by an eclectic group (I remember a Sloane Ranger exclaiming “oh, ya, you’re a real Northern Lad” as if she’d encountered a mythical, hairy creature. (NB: I haven’t invented this – it happened… and I’m not Northern, I’m from the Midlands).
The course was the first time I was directly exposed to criticism. In retrospect, I can see this was a supportive – if somewhat mismatched – group of collaborators, but at the time I wasn’t ready for it.
My pitch was a serial killer screenplay called THE JIGSAW MAN. A peer of the realm had imprisoned his psychopathic child in a room with nothing but jigsaws for distraction. Now he’s escaped and as his culling all those who abetted his father in keeping his incarceration secret. Each murder scene was marked by a piece of a jigsaw puzzle placed on the victim’s body. The case was investigated by a puzzle obsessed cop somewhere on the Asperger’s scale.
Okay, not a script that will win awards, but it was my script, my idea, and it was the first time I’d pitched an idea to a large group of peers and writers much more experienced than me.
There were some supportive comments from the populist faction in the group. But then came a withering assessment that my script was basic, derivative and didn’t tell us anything about the world today or past. The critic explained she would never be interested in collaborating on such a project and instead urged people to support her (very well pitched) story about the oppression suffered by an Indian woman during the Raj.
With a few years hindsight I can see just how poor my reaction to the criticism was. Not in a throwing things around the room in a can’t you see my genius way; in a slinking away from the course and stopping writing for a year sort of way. A whole year when I could have been working on my craft. Writing short stories. Listening to criticism but only reacting to that which could take my writing forward. All my screenwriting critic was doing was expressing a perfectly legitimate subjective preference. She had the courage of her convictions. Back then, I didn’t.
& why you should ignore this golden rule: Taking tough criticism and using it positively is a hard lesson to learn. I exhort all new writers to expose themselves to the glare of criticism as soon as they can. And to listen. Really listen.
Next time: Don’t think you can make it on your own.
Blog #3Support Derby County Football Club and as a result befriend a talented Film Director who will one day make a trailer for your book.
“I wouldn’t say I was the best manager in the business. But I was in the top one”
– Brian Clough
Stay with me on this one. I’m not being entirely flippant. One of my formative writing experiences was the editing, and collaborative writing, of a football fanzine. At the time, I’d moved to London with no clear idea of what I was going to do other than becoming an award-winning screenwriter (more on that in an upcoming post), make piles of cash and marry Uma Thurman. Okay, a clear delusion rather than a clear idea.
Instead I found myself experiencing a wide range of – often weird – temporary jobs and editing the short lived and much missed (by me) fanzine The Mutton Mutineer with home city collaborators Stuart Horn and Phil Evans. This was back in the days when Robert Maxwell owned the club and our outspoken criticism of his cack-handed regime led to us being banned from selling the Mutineer anywhere near the ground and precipitated the eventual collapse of the Maxwell empire (well, the first part is true).
I was introduced to the joys of fanzine writing, and more importantly the possibility of fanzine writing, by a young Mancunian by the name of Stan Griffin one of the collaborators on a Manchester United fanzine called The Shankill Skinhead (named for Norman Whiteside), which was a much more professional and long lived creation than the Mutineer.
While the Mutineer indulged in anarchic Maxwell baiting and cartoons made with chopped up newspaper photos of Nottingham Forest players, the Shankell Skinhead did journalism: with quotes and everything.
In retrospect, the quality of the Mutineer didn’t really matter, it was fun, well received by other fans, and most importantly opened my eyes to possibility of just creating something that other people might read and enjoy.
It was also the start of a great friendship and endless hours in pubs discussing books, films, screenplays and, of course, football.
When I launched my kids horror novel, ALL THE DEAD THINGS, Stan pulled together a crack team of collaborators (actors, cameraman, editor, composer, costume etc …)
and made an outstanding trailer. You can watch it here.
Of course, the flip side of following any football/cricket/rugby (delete as appropriate) club is that if you are an addictive personality type you can find your creativity crimped (or overwhelmed) by the ups and downs (predominantly downs in my case) of following your club. Supporting a team is like popping pills that act directly on the ‘hope’ receptors in your brain.
You keep hoping, this time it’ll be different, this time they won’t screw it up! What?! They’ve screwed it up! Blame the owners! Let’s start a fanzine!
And why you should ignore this golden rule: supporting Derby County is not good for your emotional equilibrium.
NEXT TIME: #4 Don’t use criticism as a razor
Graffiti Stories #3: Rethymno, Crete
Graffiti Stories #3: Rethymno, Crete
I stumbled across this street art on the side of a school in the labyrinthine back streets of Rethymno, Crete; streets mixing Greek, Venetian and Ottoman architectural influences alongside artisan’s boutiques, tourist tat and restaurant touts: “You from England? My cousin lives in Co-ven-tary! Very nice town!”
I’ve always loved comics and graphic novels and wished I was talented enough to make pages come alive with lines and ink. However, as we say in Derby – I can’t draw for toffee.
I once wrote a surreal, single page comic strip for a football fanzine but left the art to somebody else (imagine the FA hierarchy hanging from the ceiling like vampire bats, players grafting on extra legs all the better to win win win ….. it didn’t catch on).
I’ve come to terms with my inability to draw, but seeing what street artists create often leaves me feeling awestruck (and just a bit jealous). I suppose it’s artistry combined with the necessary guerrilla execution which fascinates me. You can’t get quite the same buzz as a writer, tapping away at your laptop.
Blog #2 Don’t be too English
“An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one”.
George Mikes
Now, I’m almost preaching to myself. I’m English and I’ve been unable to avoid absorbing many of the traits that Americans, Southern Europeans, Australians, Germans … well, pretty much everybody else … finds amusing and bemusing about about us.
Examples:
- If there’s a requirement to queue, I’ll do so in an orderly manner for as long as required and then thank you for the privilege.
- I once had a fight at school and apologised for getting the other boys uniform dirty.
- If you come barging past me at a gig, I’ll step aside and apologise for callously assaulting your elbow with my rib cage.
- If I arrive at a revolving door at the same time as somebody else, I’ll invite them to proceed before me.
The last example does conjure up the image of two Englishman arriving at a revolving door at the same time and becoming locked into a politeness-feedback-loop, both endlessly inviting the other to proceed, mirror images, neither able to break protocol, slowly growing old, frail and succumbing to the reaper as an endless procession of people swirl past the sad piles of bones and moth-eaten clothes.
Which brings me (politely) onto the subject of being pushy. As we discovered in the previous post, with 2.4 million Facebook posts per minute, the web is no place for shrinking violets (or the shy of any other hue).
If you want author alter ego to have any visibility, you must be prepared to talk about your book and, more importantly, you have to market it. If you’re proud of what you’ve written, it’s been well edited and has a compelling cover, then why should you be shy about inviting people to read it? That’s why you spent all those hours bent over a laptop.
This doesn’t mean you need to create social media presence that is the digital equivalent of the market trader standing on a bucket yelling out ‘Pound for the lot!!’ while holding up a huge bowl of tomatoes. It means you have to be targeted and work to find readers who will enjoy your work and with whom you can build up a long term relationship. It means you have to build relationships where you are offering real value, extra content, worthwhile freebies and recommendations for other authors’ books.
It means you have to find a way to avoid being the skeleton in the revolving door.
And you should ignore this golden rule: all rules in moderation. If you try to move too far away from your personality you’ll come across as fake. Readers will see through the mask and that’s alienating
NEXT: Support Derby County Football Club and as a result befriend a Talented Film Director who’ll make a wonderful promo for your book.
Added bonus: I recommend you read this article by the late, great Douglas Adams (creator of the uber English Arthur Dent) for an insight into the peculiarity of Englishness.
Graffiti Stories #2: San Jose, Costa Rica
When I was planning my trip to Costa Rica, a friend advised me to avoid staying in San Jose. I love sprawling cities, so I pushed him on his reasoning. “Because it’s Central America’s answer to Wolverhampton!” he said.
For those not familiar with English geography, Wolverhampton is a city in the West Midlands, notorious for traffic gridlock and an excessive zeal for concrete. Or so some people say. Is the city’s reputation deserved? I don’t know – I’ve only visited briefly to watch a couple of football games at the city’s Molineux stadium.
According to Wikipedia: “The demonym for people from the city is ‘Wulfrunian‘”. Wulfrunian?! To me, this sounds more like an incidental character from Game of Thrones, one of those introduced early in an episode and slaughtered before its end. A name implying a love of wattle and daub as construction materials, not concrete.
I’m digressing I know, but stay with me. I have a friend from Wolverhampton. At university he fell out of love with his course and spent his evenings learning to play the guitar rather than studying. In fact, he learnt to play one song: Cat Steven’s Moon Shadow – I listened to it on repeat, in sections, a hundred times … I can’t listen to that song ever again. When he sat his first exam, he did no more than scrawl Each Failure Is a Stepping Stone To Success on the exam paper and then headed for the pub. This particular failure wasn’t a stepping stone to success in this exam, but you get the idea – don’t mess with Wulfrunians. He came back and smashed it the following year.
If Wolverhampton can produce such self confidence, I should give its Central American cousin a chance to prove its worth.
So I stayed 2 nights in San Jose, giving me a full day to explore. It was the weekend and my expectations of traffic-clogged streets, exhaust fumes and hollering horns, proved inaccurate. On Sunday morning, a weirdly quiet and almost deserted city greeted me. But slowly, it revealed its charms: the Teatro Nacional, like a building plucked from Madrid and plonked down in the heart of the city; the Pre-Columbia Gold Museum (which also housed a fascinating contemporary art exhibit); and the pretty Barrio Escalante where I ate a wonderful lunch of chorizo salad and drank enough refreshing craft beer to make the rest of my explorations slower paced.
The one attraction I wasn’t able to see in its full glory, as it’s closed on Sundays, was the usually bustling Central Market. The plus side being all the stores had their shutters down revealing this fabulous selection of graffiti.
Te Amos Wolverhampton.
