Every now and again, I send off a short story in the hope of publication, being discovered, and a subsequent life of letters (and, of course, an invitation to join the Bobby Dazzler's 2 fundraising Moonwalk team - see previous blog entry). Overwhelmingly, these are returned/ignored. Very occasionally, the recipient takes the time to tell me why. And that's very nice of them. Of course. I will only become a better writer by listening to constructive criticism and ....blah, blah.
On the other hands, this kind of "where this failed for me" comment makes me want to hunt down the constructive critic and jam his/her "things to think about" down his/her writerly throat.
Here are a couple of recent helpful hints, about the same story.
"I enjoyed this piece and the writing was well done. But, what didn't work for me was that some of the metaphors were not ones that children would use. They were too complex and mature, making the narrator hard to believe."
"The narrative voice doesn't clearly break from the perspective of the children. Starts off okay, but as it grows more "complex" it becomes less believable."
All true, (although I'm not sure whether No. 2 constructive critic wants the narrative voice to break from the perspective of a child nor not), and I guess the very fact that I find these comments so irritating probably means I'm not mature enough, even at my advanced age, to be a serious writer. Can't imagine how annoying it must be to spend a couple of years on a book, only to have some critic dismiss it in a few paragraphs.
Not sure what the point of all that was. Think I was just set off moaning by constructive critic No. 2's use of quotation marks around complex.
Here's the story that didn't work for constructive critic A and B.
Comments