Critique Crisis
Yep, exactly what it says above. Any of you writers hit one of these? The last couple months, writing and critiquing short stories have filled most of my spare minutes. Sometimes I’m good at it – perhaps over confident. Sometimes, I’m sloppier than I should be.
Two weeks ago, I decided I was going to read Stephen King’s new short story book ‘Just After Sunset’. I wanted to enjoy and read as a reader. So I sat back with my yummy cup of coffee, relaxed, chose a random story, and began to read. Then I stopped. Then reread a sentence. Then stopped. Then reread …just like when I’m critiquing. I kept thinking, no, no, he didn’t write that….which is exactly what he wrote. There were three or four ‘that’s in a row, then a couple adverbs in the next two paragraphs.
My mind kept screaming CUT! Cut! You know, like a movie director or something. The other half of my brain, like The Fonz from Happy Days, kept saying to the director. Chill it, this makes sense. It flows. It unravels. It sounds like the character. We’re cool….I really struggled through the story. The loud mouth director kept screaming at The Fonz. Fonzie kept doin’ his chill thing and my head kept screaming at them both to be quiet.
Finally, they both shut up, and then is when it hit me. It’s the voice King was preserving. His preservation of the voice ranked higher than trying to squeeze as much info out a sentence or scene or a verb. When it comes to character and voice, the truth of the character or the situation or even your own writing voice, is more important than how many adverbs or did we really show instead of tell or how many adjectives do we need to describe this little girl’s, sunshiney, kitten with cupcakes dappled, new but not brand new, polkadotted, sewn by susie’s grandmother’s, dress?
Ok, fine, so I’m exaggerating.
The point is that as writers, or young writers, such as myself, we tend to over analyze every single word, and you know? That’s good and it’s ok when you first start writing. It’s like watching your little one walk or talk for the first year or two or three. It takes concentration and coordination of all the muscles. At some point, it’s time to stop watching the ground, raise your eyes, and aim higher. At some point, we need to stop over analyzing and see the story for what it is and where it could be. Aim toward that goal, and hopefully after a few falls and skinned knees, our new walking (critiquing) skills will get us there.
Now all this doesn’t mean I’m going to be any easier or nicer or meaner. ;) If a story sucks, it just plain sucks. It does mean that my focus is going to shift. It’s going to shift from nitpic workshop mentality to focusing on character, voice, higher goals and depth within a story, and being a better reader.
Who knows? Maybe I’m wrong about this too, but I’m growing as a writer and I try to keep an open mind. And as long as I can keep doing this, as long as WE can keep doing this, we can know we are heading somewhere…(out of Texas!)
