audience? Shmaudience!
I am feeling a little Grrrr today. Actually, I've been a little Grrrr in general for two weeks now, but overall, I am coming out of that funk. The Grrrr feeling today, however, stems from feedback. A writing colleague asked me the old "who is your intended audience for this novel" question. S/he isn't the first, nor will s/he be the last to ask the question. But this is also perhaps the 4th time s/he has asked this very question after reading my work for some time. And again, s/he isn't the first nor the last to ask me this question multiple times over years of reading from my novel. And this makes me feel GRRRR.
To be honest, I am a person who puts too much value on the feedback of others. And that is dangerous to my sense of self worth--as a human, as a woman, as a writer, etc. BUT it is important for a writer to learn to receive feedback in an open-minded manner. Sometimes, I need another person's critical eye to show me what isn't working, or what is working better than I suspected. When I get the latter type of feedback, it rocks. It's like getting a pat on the head, it is validation. I can proceed with my work revitalized, with confidence. When you are writing a novel, you crave this positive feedback, because it is such a long, solitary journey, and until the day when you sell your book to a big publishing house and Oprah calls and the NYT book review runs... There are few barometers the writer can use to assure her insecure self that this is the right path, that the time spent writing this book has not been in vain, and that her writing is, in fact, good.
Then there is the former type of feedback: what isn't working. Most of the time, I actually like receiving constructive feedback about what needs clarification or feels out of sync with other parts of the book or chapter. I like it because I often know this or that part is off, maybe I'd struggled with that section. Thus the feedback validates my concerns. All about my ego, I tell you. I especially LOVE it when someone offers possible solutions. Not that the solutions are always, or often, good, or appropriate to my characters and plot. But now and then, I luck out and someone offers me a truly workable solution. LOVE that.
The feedback that has me GRRRR today doesn't necessarily fall into either the positive or the constructively negative categories. Perhaps it falls into the personal opinion category. A separate example from a few years ago: I was enrolled in a writing program with eight other novelists. Over nine months, this group read several chapters of my novel for workshop (workshop: group discussion/critique). And every time the group workshopped my work, at least five minutes of the discussion was squandered on whether the language of my protagonist Sam was too coarse for a 9th grade boy in contemporary America. Half the group thought that Sam cussed too much and that 14-year-old boys (or 10-1/2-year old girls in the case of Sam's sister) don't swear that much, still more or less innocent. The other half agreed with me: once kids learn a little profanity, they use it abundantly--it makes them feel grown up, cool, and tough. My subjective experience: Between the ages of 9 and 11, I spent the majority of my time grounded because I would call my mother a "bitch" when quarreling. My characters talk more like I did at that age than Beaver Cleaver--they are MY characters.
So it frustrated me to no end when workshop after workshop, this same discussion came up. To make the matter more aggravating, several group members would dedicate much of their written critiques to this same subjective debate: "I still wonder if a 14-year-old boy would use that language so liberally...do kids really talk that way?" Please. Give me some real feedback. Get past the surface and actually pay attention to my work. And if you can't, tell me where the swearing really doesn't work for you and where it feels more appropriate. Don't just ask the same old question.
Back to my GRRRR feeling today. Like my protagonist's ample use of cuss words, my colleague's question revolves around voice in the story. Who is my intended audience, adults or teens? The answer: I am writing a book intended for adult readers and mature young adults. Think Catcher in the Rye. It is hard to write from a teenage perspective about child suicide and a crumbling family in Mormon Utah. I struggle daily with questions about whether his vocabularly is becoming too sophisticated, too educated, too grounded--unrealistic and out of character for a teenage boy. Likewise, I struggle daily with questions about whether dialogue and scenes between Sam and his teenage friends feel too "teen-y" for an adult audience.
So I concede that the question of audience is relevant and important. When I receive feedback about a specific passage that paints Sam as too grown up, or a specific scene that resembles Saved by the Bell more than Stand by Me... that it is helpful. But please, gentle readers, do not ask me who my intended audience is again and again. Show me that you've paid that much attention to my work, like I pay attention to the work that you do. Cut the questions and go straight to the evidence; be specific and my characters and I will thank you.
To be honest, I am a person who puts too much value on the feedback of others. And that is dangerous to my sense of self worth--as a human, as a woman, as a writer, etc. BUT it is important for a writer to learn to receive feedback in an open-minded manner. Sometimes, I need another person's critical eye to show me what isn't working, or what is working better than I suspected. When I get the latter type of feedback, it rocks. It's like getting a pat on the head, it is validation. I can proceed with my work revitalized, with confidence. When you are writing a novel, you crave this positive feedback, because it is such a long, solitary journey, and until the day when you sell your book to a big publishing house and Oprah calls and the NYT book review runs... There are few barometers the writer can use to assure her insecure self that this is the right path, that the time spent writing this book has not been in vain, and that her writing is, in fact, good.
Then there is the former type of feedback: what isn't working. Most of the time, I actually like receiving constructive feedback about what needs clarification or feels out of sync with other parts of the book or chapter. I like it because I often know this or that part is off, maybe I'd struggled with that section. Thus the feedback validates my concerns. All about my ego, I tell you. I especially LOVE it when someone offers possible solutions. Not that the solutions are always, or often, good, or appropriate to my characters and plot. But now and then, I luck out and someone offers me a truly workable solution. LOVE that.
The feedback that has me GRRRR today doesn't necessarily fall into either the positive or the constructively negative categories. Perhaps it falls into the personal opinion category. A separate example from a few years ago: I was enrolled in a writing program with eight other novelists. Over nine months, this group read several chapters of my novel for workshop (workshop: group discussion/critique). And every time the group workshopped my work, at least five minutes of the discussion was squandered on whether the language of my protagonist Sam was too coarse for a 9th grade boy in contemporary America. Half the group thought that Sam cussed too much and that 14-year-old boys (or 10-1/2-year old girls in the case of Sam's sister) don't swear that much, still more or less innocent. The other half agreed with me: once kids learn a little profanity, they use it abundantly--it makes them feel grown up, cool, and tough. My subjective experience: Between the ages of 9 and 11, I spent the majority of my time grounded because I would call my mother a "bitch" when quarreling. My characters talk more like I did at that age than Beaver Cleaver--they are MY characters.
So it frustrated me to no end when workshop after workshop, this same discussion came up. To make the matter more aggravating, several group members would dedicate much of their written critiques to this same subjective debate: "I still wonder if a 14-year-old boy would use that language so liberally...do kids really talk that way?" Please. Give me some real feedback. Get past the surface and actually pay attention to my work. And if you can't, tell me where the swearing really doesn't work for you and where it feels more appropriate. Don't just ask the same old question.
Back to my GRRRR feeling today. Like my protagonist's ample use of cuss words, my colleague's question revolves around voice in the story. Who is my intended audience, adults or teens? The answer: I am writing a book intended for adult readers and mature young adults. Think Catcher in the Rye. It is hard to write from a teenage perspective about child suicide and a crumbling family in Mormon Utah. I struggle daily with questions about whether his vocabularly is becoming too sophisticated, too educated, too grounded--unrealistic and out of character for a teenage boy. Likewise, I struggle daily with questions about whether dialogue and scenes between Sam and his teenage friends feel too "teen-y" for an adult audience.
So I concede that the question of audience is relevant and important. When I receive feedback about a specific passage that paints Sam as too grown up, or a specific scene that resembles Saved by the Bell more than Stand by Me... that it is helpful. But please, gentle readers, do not ask me who my intended audience is again and again. Show me that you've paid that much attention to my work, like I pay attention to the work that you do. Cut the questions and go straight to the evidence; be specific and my characters and I will thank you.
posted by Jess | 5:32 PM
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2 comments
