Gadzooks! Time for a Game of Crit Eeks!
By Jan O'Hara | January 17, 2011 |
If you’ve noticed I spend a lot of time talking about handling writerly fear, it’s because at heart I’m a big chicken. The past few days have been no exception. (Buck-buck-buuuuuck.) In fact, all week I’ve felt the Internal Editor’s breath on the nape of my neck, danced one step ahead of his grasping, bony fingers.
Fortunately, I’m not without my resources.
Would you like to play a game that helps me? One forged in the gallows humor of medicine and honed in the bedrooms of my children? (Yes, my poor, psychologically damaged children who presently huddle outside the office door, wondering why supper’s not made and their mother cackles within.)
The rules are thus: Take your insecurities about your writing and exaggerate them to ludicrous proportions. Write them out as if they were reader reviews. When you do, one of two things will occur:
- You’ll laugh and regain a sense of perspective, or
- You’ll work your adrenal glands to exhaustion. Then, when asked to pump out another molecule of stress hormones, they will gasp, wheeze, and wave you forward on the writing path – alone.
Either way, you’ll return to the blank page with an easier mind.
To illustrate how it works, here are some of my own fears after vigorous Crit Eeking:
I laughed at the title, was intrigued by the premise, but the content made me sob like a baby with excoriated diaper rash after a meal of jalapeños. No, Ms. O’Hara, no. Words like “wolverine” and “trouser snake” do not belong in the same sentence. Not in a tender love scene featuring a virgin’s deflowering.
I approached this book with scepticism because I don’t usually read this genre. Boy, would running have been a mistake. Funny, sexy, incandescent… This author is a fresh new voice in the literary world.
~author of Snow for Christmas: How Cocaine Freed Me from the Tyranny of a Steady Paycheck and Allowed Me to Meet Sweetlips
~~~
Hands down the best book I’ve read in a long time – if you’re looking for proof of why the traditional publishing model is doomed.
I-I have never done this before… I’m not sure I have the words… I was asked to blurb this book by my sister, who’s the author’s good friend and confidant. Needless to say, I had to refuse.
I hope you’re happy, Ms. O’Hara! Now my children will grow up without knowing their cousins. As for my sister, you took a sweet, generous woman and taught her to speak fluent forked tongue – your first and only demonstration of facility with language.
Best book I consumed in a long time. Delicious cover art. Sturdy characters. After me and the young ‘uns done slept on it some, we moved the pages to the corner privy where they served as an absorbing read.
~Abigail Ro Dent, author of Best of Modern Litter-ature
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How about you? Care to play with a Crit Eek of your own? Alternatively, have any other suggestions about how to invite humor and playfulness into the Internal Editor’s traditional domain?
A USA Today bestselling author, former family physician and academic, Jan O’Hara (she/her) left the world of medicine behind to follow her dreams of becoming a writer. She writes love stories that zoom from wackadoodle to heartfelt in six seconds flat: (Opposite of Frozen; Cold and Hottie; Desperate Times, Desperate Pleasures). Her latest Christmas novella, The Cowboy’s Comeback Christmas, is part of a 9-author-strong anthology (A Cowboy This Christmas: A Sweet Romance Anthology). She also contributed to Author in Progress, a Writer’s Digest Book edited by Therese Walsh.
A Book to Be Remembered
It is truly refreshing to see an author unfettered by the constraints of conventional grammar, spelling, characterization, or story-telling logic. The result is a radical departure from that body of literature that we conventionally consider to be “good,” and while perhaps not quite worthy of the term “ground-breaking,” this work does make an impression on the senses, primarily as the literary equivalent of “breaking wind.” Indeed, to extend that metaphor, one could say this novel will be remembered much in the way that one experiences an olfactory memory of last night’s three-bean chili.
In clinical trials, a comparison of patients given drugs for sleeplessness versus patients given this novel to read demonstrated that the slow plot pace and turgid prose produced a somnolent state in the reader 100 percent greater in effect and 100 percent faster than the highest drug dose short of suicide.
Awesome, hilarious post. Both my adrenal glands and I could use the workout. Thank you.
Also, this?
“Yes, my poor, psychologically damaged children who presently huddle outside the office door, wondering why supper’s not made and their mother cackles within.”
Yeah. Here too.
Great post. Perspective is a good thing. (As I stare at the umpteenth rewrite of two chapters with plot holes the size of the Grand Canyon).
“The author has obviously stretched reality to the thickness of strudel-dough in an attempt to keep her POV character in the midst of the action”
Terry
Terry’s Place
Romance with a Twist–of Mystery
You are the master of the witty blog post title, Jan, and I laughed throughout the entire post! I will definitely give this a try today, but fear being institutionalized over the hopeful outcome of calming perspective. But it’s a chance I’m willing to take…
Funniest thing I’ve read in a week. Thanks for the laughs, Jan!
Non-writers do not fully comprehend, nor do they sympathize with, the tension and aggravation that await writers as they walk to their computers each morning to find that not one word has been written since they went to bed last night, that they must again face a startlingly blank page, and that not one fresh, solid idea has occurred to them since yesterday when they abandoned their posts due to a lack of fresh and solid ideas. W. Jackson Bate, Samuel Johnson’ (other) biographer said it is “inner resistance to dragging oneself, hour after hour, to the bar of self-judgment.”
The basic material of the profession–words–are free. They exist in the ether, and all one needs to do his pluck them from the air. All sorts of words exist, hence the thickness of dictionaries. Some words are mellifluous, some are cacophonous. Some are pointless, some are poignant. Some are obscure, some are trite. But they are there for the taking, like sand in the Gobi Desert. We have equal access to these words as did Herman Melville, as does Tom Clancy. The problem is getting the words in the correct order. That’s a fearsome prospect.
I love this game! But then, some of my REAL rejections sound too much like the pretend ones, so the question is, how do you make, “I was really glad you only sent me a sample because when I got to the end of it, I was glad there wasn’t any more” funny?
Oh, you people are good! One might be tempted to think you’ve been practicing. :)
Amanda, thank you, LOL. Hope you don’t turn into a quivering mass of last-nerve under your bed.
Therese and others, I’m glad if I made you smile.
James, you have every right to your fear, and I get there at times, myself. But I’m in trouble if I dwell. I’m finding more and more that taking some kind of action – even non-writing action – helps me move forward. From what I’ve seen all writers live with these emotions. It’s the ability to tolerate – nay, even embrace them – that the career writers master.
Sarah, ouch! Okay, let’s play: In the snippets, my prose made me fit for ridicule, were responsible for families being torn assunder, and proved lethal. How about: caused a war? Made me somnabulent so I had a car accident? Now I have all my limbs bandaged and an ortho nurse named Bertha?
Jan, I loved this post so much. It provided a much needed laugh on a gloomy morning.
“Dear Ms. writer:
Thank you for your query and the first 10 pages of your manuscript. Not only are we rejecting your attempt to secure our agency representation, but we felt the need to further personalize this rejection by asking you never, ever to contact us again. By the time you become anything resembling a competent writer we feel sure all members of this agency will either be retired or dead.”
This is great Jan! Don’t we all have those fears and insecurities? For me, it’s the reviews. I keep waiting for someone to say something along the lines of how incredibly shocked they are that this drivel was published. I keep waiting to be called out, for someone to say I’m a fraud and that their preschooler could have done better. And there are lots of times, such as now when I should be writing my book, where I think maybe I shouldn’t have quit my day job. Oh wait! I didn’t have one. ;-)
Have a nice day!
You humor and you style shine through, Jan! Thanks for a great laugh, and I’ve loved reading the comments almost as much as the post itself.
What I would write about my own overblown prose would be unpublishable on this (or any other blog).
And that would be YOUR, not you! ;-) Ugh.
Oh My Gawd I LOVE THIS! LAUGHING ME ARSE OFF – Miz Tart, you are so clever.. LAUGHING
Okay, Wednesday is my “linkee” day – I’m linking to this so people can try it out — going to write up some of my own, too
LAUGHING…. lawd lawd lawd!
Sarah, tell me that wasn’t a real rejection. Yikes. That would be beyond cruel. And if it was, hopefully just what you needed to show them how wrong they were!
What Deborah said.
LOL, Jan! As for me, I would quote the ten words that ring like a clarion of doom for me … but I WON’T, because it’s not the voice of my internal critic, but an actual one! I laughed at it then, and I laugh at it now. Thanks for the reminder that WORDS are JUST WORDS. :)
Ouch! Some killer zings in here, guys. You rock at this. (But then I knew you would.)
Sarah, I took your question at face value; I know there are agents who’ve replied along those lines to other writers from the AW forums. Obviously, in these cases, that says more about the state of mind of the critiquer than the recipient’s work. Very painful, though!
Timothy, good thing there were only ten. 0.0
Absolutely too funny, and just what I needed. My children also huddle outside my office door while I work, so my reject would have to go something like this:
Dear Author,
In the best interests of your sorely neglected offspring, I feel it is my duty to inform you that this novel will never, under any circumstances, be published. You may be able to string a few words together, but your story has all the energy of an anemic octogenarian. People can stare at at a blank television screen for free and receive a good deal more entertainment. My advice is to set the manuscript on fire; at least then, your kids can roast marshmallows over it.
*bows at Jan’s feet*
I’m not worthy, I’m not worthy!
I have nothing to contribute. This was so deliciously perfect, and the other commenters did such a lovely job of adding to your post. I am going to slink off into anonymous exile now. LOL
“Go bake a pie or do something you can actually make money at.”
“You make my brain bleed.”
“Your MS makes for a great door-stop.”
This is fun!!
Campfire fuel and brain bleeds? You people have savage Internal Editors. Obviously you’re made of stern stuff to write despite their voices.
Donna, LOL, if there’s anyone who can make anonymous exile funny, it’s you, chica. Come back when you’re over your faux suckitude. ;)
What a fabulous way to take the ouch out of rejection. Honestly, but this concept is almost too much fun. Truly puts the exclamation point on “getting the last laugh.” You’re awesome, Jan!
Okay–so it was a real rejection. I know that others have had worse, so as I paste in the real quote, please believe that you have all made my day and that I have a huge grin on my face–because this rejection is just so . . . so . . . priceless:
“I’m sorry to say that I don’t find it resonant or the characters particularly vivid, and the most damning thing is, I wasn’t disappointed when I turned the last page and found out there wasn’t any more.”
Oh, Barbara, thank you! *blushing*
Sarah, in the words of Jennifer Crusie’s immortal characters in FAKING IT, I offer you a “poor baby.” Yikes! Glad you’re able to smile about it now.