A personal question if there ever was one. Let’s start with my writing career and hopefully that will cause you so examine your own motivation to write (or not!). I had written a short story the summer after seventh grade. It was about a girl and me driving cross country in my favorite car like my idols did on a TV program called Route 66. Even though the show had two guys, I had a girl for a partner and our adventure began as we cruised across the prairie of Nebraska and came upon a huge multi-car pileup. We learned that we could be great partners who rescued people, had the ability to be up to our elbows in intestines, and were therefore destined for medical school. I remember I loved writing and rewriting the story until it had the emotional impact I wanted. I gave it to my mother to read. I remember she read it, stared at me for a while, and then reread the story.
“This is great,” she said. Coming from my English major mother, that was excellent praise indeed.
“You should try writing it again without the female character. You’re too young to be writing about girls.”
I had no interest in rewriting the story so it sat on a shelf in my room until I needed a short story for an English class the following year. As English class usually bored me to tears, my grades in that area were terrible. The teacher called my home and accused me of plagiarizing someone else’s work. My mother confirmed that it was my original work that I had written the previous summer. With what I suspect was considerable regret, the teacher did give me an A. I was fascinated by math and science so writing didn’t become part of my life for many years. When my mother found my letters from college and Vietnam fascinating to the point she thought I should polish them and try to get them published. I never did.
When I retired from a super techie career of mathematics and firmware engineering at age 61, I was looking for something to do in retirement. I decided to see if I could write a novel, the first of which relied heavily on personal memories. That accomplished, I wrote two more and realized that anytime I sat in front of a keyboard story lines would come rolling out of my head. For all you would be writers out there, let me caution you… the ideas are only about 3 percent of the effort needed to complete a novel. Maybe you’ve heard that a writer agonizes over every word. It’s true. Each of my novels goes through at least twenty revisions before I think it’s ready to send to an editor which of course means more revisions after she looks at it.
Why go through all this? I live for the challenge of refining and polishing a scene until it has the emotional impact I’m looking for. In one sentence; that’s why I write.
What motivated you to write? When did you know you wanted to write?
Good criticism comes from someone who is knowledgeable about writing and editing. It can be about one line, one chapter or an entire book. It consists of specific suggestions that improve my writing. That means a suggestion that mentions a specific problem and a solution that would correct that problem. I’ve written what I think are some excellent chapters for my books but when someone else reads them, they realize that they don’t help move my story along. When you’re busy in your role as a wordsmith, sometimes it is hard to see the forest for the trees. Good criticism can also come from someone who enjoys your genre, and is a potential reader of your efforts. This usually isn’t as specific but may help guide your story to your intended audience.
How many times have we been told that someone has an idea for the world’s greatest piece of literature but just hasn’t gotten around to writing it? Why do these people then give us their idea of sage advice on how to improve and what we should be writing? At least half of these people have trouble speaking in complete sentences let alone communicate a coherent thought. I smile and listen patiently to these well intentioned mental litterbugs. When I was in my career as a mathematician, I didn’t run into these types of people but now that I’m writing they seem to be coming out of the woodwork.
As soon as criticism becomes personal attacks, it’s time to excuse yourself and walk away. I sent a manuscript to an editor who must have been awfully angry with the world because he attacked everything short of my manhood in describing the problems with my manuscript. And I paid big money for his insults. I don’t mind negative critiques that I can learn from; but angry rants have no value.
The best critique I have received from my readers:
Back when I was in college, if I had difficulty with a mathematical proof, I would ask an upper classman for help. Invariably their answer would be, “That’s trivial!” Of course it was trivial for them; they had already put in the time and struggle to learn the material.
