Us creative types have somewhat sensitive egos. We invest so much of ourselves in our creations that we can’t quite separate our work from ourselves, leaving us very prickly when it comes to criticism.If the critic says “this was a bad book”, the sensitive writer will rationally tell themselves that one can’t please everyone, but inside, our fragile author will be weeping blood at being so brutally rejected.
Over time, writers learn that just because someone hates their book this doesn’t mean they would hate the writer per se. Mind you, most writers aren’t that interested in even attempting to get to know someone who dismissed their magnum opus as “badly written” or “bland”. Over time, writers get reconciled to receiving bad reviews – but hate them all the same. That feeling of being eviscerated upon reading someone’s scathing comments just never goes away.
In some cases, the negative reviews reflect a difference in taste. Where the writer loves pink and fluffy endings, the reviewer can’t abide this unrealistic nonsense. In most cases, reviews point at things the writer needs to work with. Some reviews are just spiteful and should be totally ignored. Others highlight the fact that this particular writer did not have a Critical Friend.
A classic, if non-writing, example of when a Critical Friend is a friend in need, is when people apply to talent shows – such as American Idol. The eager and talent-less applicant is totally torn apart by the jury, and says things like “My mother told me I can sing,” or “my best friend always said I’m the next Whitney Houston.” To judge from the recent performance, mother and BFF are as tone-deaf as the would-be Idol. Or uncomfortable with telling the truth.
We don’t like telling people truths we suspect might hurt them. If someone asks us how they look in something, chances are we’ll tell them they look fine, even if the overall impression is that of a bratwurst about to burst apart. Honesty can kill a friendship unless delivered with enormous tact, and so many of us opt for less of the honesty by making vague approving sounds while not going so far as exclaiming “Wow, you look smoking hot in that!”.
By not telling the truth, chances are we’re doing our friends a major disfavour. That young boy with a voice like a rusty saw would have been better off had he not applied to American Idol, there to make a fool of himself in front of millions of viewers. Our friend that we sent off in that far too tight skirt, would have preferred to hear from us that maybe that skirt was not the most becoming.
Enter the Critical Friend. Now, to be a Critical Friend, you first have to qualify as a friend, which essentially means you’ve proven time and time again that you always have your friend’s best interests at heart. You’ve listened to hourly monologues about cheating partners. You’ve stoically tolerated being yelled at when you’ve stopped your BFF from leaping onto a motorbike with an unknown, if gorgeous, man. You’ve held hands in moments of grief, you’ve danced polka over the kitchen floor to celebrate degrees, jobs, babies, weddings. You’ve sat all night on a bench outside the police station so as to be able to be there when your BFF is released next morning. You’ve dashed across town at four in the morning because your friend woke you up yelling emergency and you were expecting a bloodbath but found him/her crying over their dead hamster. You know, the stuff friends do for each other. Real friends, that is: those friends who also speak the truth when it comes to singing abilities and overly tight suede skirts.
For an author, a Critical Friend is worth their weight in gold. A Critical Friend will deconstruct your tottering plot line before a reviewer does. A Critical Friend will point at plot holes, at unrealistic characters, at pages littered with adverbs. A Critical Friend will tell you this story will never fly, because there isn’t anyone in the world but you interested in a book featuring a worm and a pine cone. Even when you try to explain the worm and the pine cone are symbolic, Critical BFF will be unimpressed, thereby saving you from publishing a book that would have you squirming on a hook some years from now.
I have a Critical Friend. I have a person who loves me enough to look at me and say “hmmm.” I know what that means: it means whatever she is presently reading is really, really bad. She only uses a long “hmmm” in such situations. A “huh” indicates she doesn’t buy it, but sees the potential. And when she grins and goes “kssksskss” I know I’ve struck gold.
My Critical Friend told me to hide my first few manuscripts wherever the sun wouldn’t find them and forget about them. My Critical Friend has read my books in version 1 through 10. She sends me cryptic messages along the lines of “what happened to the burlap sack?” at five a.m. and I have to think really hard to identify what burlap sack she might be referring to. My Critical Friend is happy to sit for hours and dissect my characters – and my plotlines. I’m not always thrilled by the outcome of all this dissection, but in general it results in a better product, even if I’ve had to cut out my three most favourite scenes.
Does having a Critical Friend preclude negative reviews? Of course not. But with Critical Friend and Amazing Editor scrutinising my every word, I am pretty confident the book isn’t as bad as the reviewer thinks. “Everyone is entitled to their opinion,” I’ll say with a bright smile—which doesn’t mean I don’t gnash my teeth and stick pins in my voodoo doll in private. Hey, what can I say? I’m one of those sensitive creative types, remember?
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