Jen Knox's Blog, page 21
May 29, 2023
On (in)authenticity
Oxford Learner’s Dictionary
Inauthentic, adjective: not what somebody claims it is; that you cannot believe or rely on
The idea of inauthenticity often brings to mind politeness at any cost. It brings to mind the myriad “anti-aging” potions and pills. It feeds on comparison and competition. It reminds me of myself as a pre-teen, going through great pains to style my hair like Kelly on 90210 (my hair is thick, curly, and red; hers was thin, straight, and blonde - it didn’t work so well).
In writing, I believe that a lack of authenticity arises in the writer who cuts corners or perpetually struggles to sound like someone else at the cost of their own voice and story. I think of work that is safe.
Inauthenticity in action = hiding.
But what about authenticity in action? How do we stop hiding? How do we own our own stories and find our own voices on the page and in life?
In both my leadership and writing research, I’ve found that we can find ways to show up in ways that may not be what’s expected or easy and still do so with resolve. The ability to be authentic, in my experience (and readings), can be supported with two (2) practices.
Understand that showing up authentically just means trusting ourselves, and remembering why we should trust ourselves.
Trust of self can be summoned by remembering times we’ve done it before. Call to mind a time you showed up and felt completely yourself and in alignment. Maybe those were times you were writing and the pen felt like it was just moving without effort. Or times you just felt comfortable enough to be fully yourself in person.
Take a few moments here and there to remember how it felt to show up like this, and tap those feelings . . . memorizing (imprinting) and revisiting them. And while you’re at it, study those times. Where were you? What do you think led to the ease, the flow?
For me, these times show up when I feel truly invested.
For instance, if I’ve been churning on a story for a few weeks, then I finally sit down to write it, the thing flows. If I sit down with the thought “I’m going to write a story because I should,” it doesn’t work so well.
Another example is when I sit with a prompt and just begin to play, remaining open to what comes. If I do, something authentic comes. If I try to force, not so much.
If I’m writing an essay, and I’m truly invested in the topic, or open to the receptive creative process, the essay writes itself. If I’m writing about something just to be trendy (well, I don’t, obv.), then it’s stilted.
And in person, well, if you know me at all, I’m incapable of being inauthentic. My face is expressive, and I simply start daydreaming if I feel I’m in an environment that’s not productive.
Again, the point is trust … trusting yourself means remembering times when you have shown up authentically. Think about it. Capture a few moments. Recount them. Write them down.
Reconnect (and reevaluate) what you value in any given project or situation.
Education, creativity, free expression, inclusivity, joy, humor, friendship, honesty, equity, health … whatever your top values are right now, they’re helpful when thinking about any given project or situation.
How does this project speak to your values? Does it need to?
How are you living in accordance or out of sync with these values? (Your true values, not what you think you should value.)
I made a little meditation about examining authenticity that follows the above rationale. But my best advice, in a nutshell, goes like this:
You don’t have to write every day. You don’t have to be productive every day.
You don’t have to write what anyone else writes.
You don’t have to write what’s politically correct or socially trendy.
You have to write when and what you are called to.
Show up consistently.
Be kind, be exploratory, and the rest will work itself out.
If we stay open, we stay in this state of self-trust and exploration, we sure can find the beauty in this crazy life.
xoxo Jen
Meditation for paid subscribers here: Showing up with Authenticity
May 28, 2023
May 25, 2023
On what disappears and what once was
Once upon a time, I lived a few blocks from the Wonderbread factory near downtown Columbus, Ohio. I woke to the buttery smell of fresh bread wafting through my window. My bedroom was my safe space.
Three of my walls were blue, like the sky. My father, along with his artist friends, had drawn mythical creatures on my walls. One of my walls was brick, so the room was always a little cold, no matter the season, but it was divine. It was my space. And the quiet mornings, especially, embraced me.
Photo by Graphy Co on UnsplashI remember getting ready for school while listening to pop music and dancing around my bedroom as I teased my bangs. I’d walk to the end of my street and stand in front of a row of yellow apartments that sat catty corner to what I’d heard referred to as “the old folks’ home,” which was notable to me as a kid ever since I heard afternoon gunshots only to later find out that the shooter had been a resident of said “home” trying her hand at squirrel population control via attempted sharpshooting from her bedroom window (no squirrels or other entities were injured, as far as I know).
Across the street was a beautiful woman named Marla who practiced and taught yoga, and at the end of the street was my best friend and dancing mentor, Nikki. Some years later, another friend, Lisa, would move in, and she’d become my confidant and partner in crime for years.
While the homes are still there, the smell of bread baking at 5 a.m. in that neighborhood is gone. The apartments are gone. The geriatric living facility has been replaced by new, single-family homes. The Columbus City squirrels are safer, and I no longer tease my bangs.
What I don’t know is where Nikki or Marla lives. Lisa and I connect every few years. And my parents no longer speak to each other.
Nothing lasts, but this brings me to an idea I had for a workshop I taught this morning. At the risk of sounding cliche, what better reminder is there to stay present than the ephemeral nature of things? The promise of change is an invitation to fully embrace what’s happening now. And if the moment sucks, well, good news! It’ll be over in a flash. Erased. Poof!
I understand the impetus to want to conserve (spaces, places, rituals, and relationships), but sometimes the idea that things have their time and place is what makes this human journey beautiful in my mind. We are not meant to live forever, nor are our structures or behaviors.
At forty-three, I now live less than an hour from the neighborhood I grew up in. I will soon read at Prologue Bookshop, which is in a very nice part of a neighborhood that was not very nice when I was growing up.
I will look at unfamiliar landmarks as I drive there, and I will occupy space that holds a past but has also moved well beyond it. While I cannot wait because it’s a beautiful bookshop and I get to share the stage (which I love) with an immensely talented writer (Karin Cecile Davidson), the space itself is entangled with quite a few memories that I won’t unpack here.
Instead, I’ll attempt to honor the space for what it is now. This is my challenge and my call to action.
And it is this move to detangle feelings that gave me a very cool writing prompt, which I just shared on Aura and would like to share with you now. There are four steps. It’s not the easiest prompt, but I hope it brings you somewhere that is full of gratitude for the ephemeral.
Write about a place that is or was safe to you (real or imagined). 5 minutes. No overthinking.
Write about a place from your past that no longer exists. 5 minutes.
Write about where we are now. 5 minutes.
Attempt to braid these three sections into an essay. Take as much time as you need.
If you write from this, or even part of it, please share with me how it went. Wishing you all good things.
xo Jen
May 22, 2023
On vision and revision
Does the media we consume inform life, or does life inform what we decide to consume? (I know part of the answer is “algorithm,” but that’s another discussion.)
Whatever the case, I am currently revising a lot of creative work and wanted to explore what I’m reading through the lens of revision.
The first is fiction: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, one of the best books I’ve read this year. This novel just won the Pulitzer, so I suppose others agree. I started it while spending time near the Appalachian region of Tennessee.
The other, Leading Through Culture, is a classic business book, not substantial or memorable and I think self-funded, but it contains a good amount of practical advice for those who want to lead. I’m reading this as I work on my new syllabus for a personal leadership course.
I think only the former is relevant to my current obsession with revision, but I might tackle some of the ideas I gleaned from the business book next week.
Demon Copperhead:
Why do I love it? It’s not so much the topic or the circumstances of the book, nor its theme or context. It’s the humanity of the thing, the way the character and his story tug at me and make me want to not only read on but think about how the author pulled this off. How did she create a character so alive? So unforgettable and endearing that unsavory scenes are digestible?
I can’t speak to another writer’s process, but I can imagine.
The sense a reader gets from this book’s narrative voice is that there was a point in the writing where the character (in this case a protag named Damon who is known as Demon) took Kingsolver by the hand and led her forward. Rushed her forward even. Perhaps this character was seeded by a meeting. Perhaps he came together as an algorithm does, through a variety of information that began to form a being, fictional, I realize, but again, unforgettable.
What many people note in Kingsolver’s writing in general is her ability to seamlessly weave in research and a clear-headed, 360 analysis of a time or topic—in this case Appalachian poverty and a drug culture that feeds on existing pain.
So this is pure speculation, but my sense is that a book like this comes together in parts. The first part is the story/character. The second part is the research/macrocosm. And when I think about the process of revising a novel like this, I imagine it’d be the weaving of these two that would be where the lion’s share of the work would be.
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As I write more essays about my past, I realize that I don’t remember things right. I had to reference my own Social Security statement to remember all my jobs, let alone dates. And I had to look up years to remember what was going on in the news. It seems my own writing flows, but when I try to weave in the facts that I don’t remember, the sentences grow clunky.
I pay attention to the sentences Kingsolver writes. How she releases information about culture and history through a young narrator’s digressive monologue, yet makes it exceedingly compelling. I notice she also pulls it off through scenes, such as one in which a young “Demon” is working in a tobacco field without gloves and gets nicotine poisoning from touching the plant, which then offers a nice transition into the history of tobacco farming, subsidies, and worker conditions historically.
I’m going to continue to think and absorb as I read, but I think the smoothness of such transitions is an art one must simply practice. And so that’s my goal over the next few weeks with the mad-dash writing I did in Tennessee.
The research is fun. The writing is fun. The weaving is meticulous and seems impossible at times, but it’s doable and, as Kingsolver proves, the payoff is remarkable. I watched a short interview with the author after writing most of this blog and love what she says about the daunting phase of the writing process:
Thanks for reading!
xo Jen
Writing plug: One of my work essays (research was needed, thanks to my faulty memory) just earned runner-up for the Gordon Review Lit Cleveland contest. I am especially honored that it was given this recognition by powerhouse writer Hanif Abdurraqib.
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May 14, 2023
On residencies
I’m at Rockvale Writers’ Colony, a writing residency in College Grove, Tennessee. My room is simple and beautiful, a perfect environment for creative focus.
While I will no longer be here when you read this, and I will have written many sentences that certain Tennessee lobbyists would deem “obscene,” I’m here now, as I write these words, and I’m grateful for the time and space.
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Residencies are not for everyone. They are not spas. They are perhaps more like meditation retreats. They’re extreme and intense. They’re ideal for those who can write (and want to write) with hyperfocus. Residencies are serious business, and if they’re designed right, a writer cannot avoid writing because there’s not much else to do.
Of course, things never go exactly as planned.
My intended routine here was:
Wake for meditation and tea
Walk or do some exercise
Write till lunch (aim for 10 pages)
Walk
Write till dinner (aim for 10 pages, or revise 20)
Read
My actual routine on Day 1 was like this:
Woke at 2 a.m. in horrific stomach pain
Feeling a little better by 10 a.m.
Read a little and wrote very little
Day 2 went like this:
Wake and hand wash the clothes I wore yesterday
Meditate and drink tea
Slather on sunblock and walk for a mile before feeling the sunblock melt off and hustling home
Talk with one of the other writers about ChatGPT for an hour
Sit to write, but decide to take a bath instead
“Shit, I forgot to check my email.” (fast-forward an hour: “Shit, I shouldn’t have checked my email.)
Think about what to write
Eat lunch and read one of the many books on the shelves here
Write
Hear someone in the kitchen and go to talk about the strikes and how writers are underpaid, and this needs to stop
Think about what I need to revise
Revise
Realize I forgot something
Drive a half-hour into town, drive back (all the while thinking about what to write and revise)
Sleep
The days passed, and my intended schedule started to fall into place. As of now, I’ve written 10,000 words (we won’t talk about quality) and revised double that. I have a new novel draft, a full one, and a little headway on my collection of essays. (If you think having a new novel draft means I’ll have a new novel out soon, read this.)
I've shared this space with three lovely women who seem as dedicated as I am, who joined me for cookies and wine or general talks about our projects and places in the world, and who I often bump into while using the shared kitchen.
At this particular residency, once I found my way, I stuck to three primary activities: writing, walking, and eating. I began walking between writing scenes, or when I feel my legs growing numb. One of my favorite things to do is visit one of my new friends (see image above) who often gallops past me on the way to his trough.
When I’ve walked on the road, I haven’t had to worry about the absence of sidewalks. Only the occasional truck kicks up dust on the two-lane road down the hill. From the front door, I can journey beyond a garden swelling with giant bumble bees, down a gravel hill, and toward a pasture full of cows who look at me, ears tagged, and quickly determine I am a mere interruption to their grazing.
One day, I bragged to my resident mates about seeing a roadrunner, only to find out it was a bald turkey.
By Day 5, today, I barely remember my old life. I am caught up in my stories, their narrative arcs, the characters, and the complexities of fictional lives. My mental space is reserved for the novel and the few essays I write in between.
It will be a year before I attend another residency, provided I get in (they can be competitive), but here are my primary takeaways.
It takes a few days to get momentum in a new environment.
To adapt to a meditative silence for full days at a time is to confront thoughts you’ve been avoiding.
Know that projects will arise you forgot about, or you will have to take a few work calls.
Be realistic with goals, so you can dance past them and feel good about yourself.
You might make friends, you might make art. You might make both. I have made some of my best friends at residencies, and some have been more productive than others.
You can also create your own. Many writers have done this. I recommend one of two ways.
Grab a hotel room, or find a friend’s spare bedroom.
Kick everyone out of the house. With this option, simply refuse to take calls or respond to emails or look at your social media for a few days. And herein in the philosophical question of the day—why is that so impossible without finding new space?
Residencies are an excellent way to infuse adventure into your life. I won’t get into my journey here, but let’s just say I’m pretty sure I met two novels’ worth of characters on my drive here alone.
Here are a few I’m considering applying to next year. Most offer
a stipend and time/space. If I don’t get into any of them, I will do as advised above and make my own.
Franconia Sculpture Park, Minnesota
Longhaven Artists Residency, Tennessee
And if you’re in the market for residencies and want some recommendations, here are a few I’ve attended and enjoyed:
Vermont Studio Center (it’s been a while, but it was lovely, and food was everywhere)
Rockvale Writers’ Colony (where I am now)
Art Farm (this one made me work, but it also gave me one of my best friends and some of my most interesting stories)
I have one day left, and we’ll see what happens. Then there’s the long trek home. Maybe I’ll meet some characters for my next book. In the meantime, I wanted to share my view. :)
xo Jen
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May 9, 2023
On meditation as creative prescription
I wanted to explore the idea of meditation’s role in creativity, the romanticization of meditation, and the difference between creative flow and meditative practice. But let’s begin with you. And me.
I’ve meditated daily for over 15 years. Without fail. But sometimes my meditations are just a few minutes. And if I think about meditation in a certain way, perhaps I’ve always done it—right on back to the hypnotic state I’d achieve while sitting on the ledge outside my bedroom window as a kid and feeling the wind kiss my cheeks.
One of the first essays I ever wrote as an adult (along with an exploration of Camus and a parakeet) was about how packing a box of Parliaments or Newports, tapping the bottom of the box with just the right pressure to release a single cigarette, lighting it with my Zippo, inhaling deeply, and blowing the smoke slowly with slightly puffed cheeks and a steadfast gaze was my meditation. I’d been reading a Buddhist text on death and had drawn a little grim reaper behind a stick figure on my fridge above the caption “Death is hovering, so why stress out?”
Sounds a bit macabre, I realize, but it was truly rather uplifting to me at the time. I savored every puff of smoke and every moment I could. Not once finding contact with a meditation cushion or listening to a guided meditation, I accessed some part of meditation—the focus that can come with routine and dedication. Along with smoking, my meditation at the time was, increasingly, writing.
While at one time, smoking a cigarette was as close as I could get to meditative focus. Now, I’m a bit more literal with my meditation, but the goal is still to achieve focus and clarity outside of meditation. My goal is not mere meditative focus but rather a sort of meditative presence — at least an attempt — while living. Not merely while on a cushion or a yoga mat. Not just while doing a ritual or routine. Not just while listening to another’s thoughts on the topic.
But in every moment I can call to mind clarity and presence.
Photo by Selvan BSo. Meditation and creativity. What’s the connection, if anything?
For me, it’s simply accessing a space that is receptive and attentive. My friend Jim Coe posted on my last blog post and got me thinking about the delineation between writer and writing. Are they one and the same? Or are we barely a part of our output—just a vessel from which to relay uniquely accumulated information?
In meditation, we watch the mind, but we also find presence. So we’re at once watchful and able to access the senses. We’re able to do it all. Reflect, feel, and visualize. Presence means being inclusive of all the component parts of the self.
I find this same access point in writing, but I also know that my own experiences, influences, and biases feed my writing as much as the more mysterious … the muses if you will.
Then again, perhaps our very life is the muse.
It’s all mysterious, and we just need to slow down enough or look with the right angle or through the right medium, to connect. To feel. Fully. And enjoy wherever we’re at.
I guess my takeaway is that you don’t need to have a meditation practice that looks like one or another teacher tells you it should. And you certainly do not need a specific meditation practice to be creative. You just need to find the mediation in the creativity.
That said, why not practice with me?
When you have 16 minutes to spare, let’s do this together. This is the raw recording I made for Aura and Insight Timer, so there’s no intro music, but I think it’s pretty clean. I wrote this one to focus on taking my personal practice off the cushion or mat. And setting a little cueing exercise for meditation in the midst of living.
Next week, I’ll discuss writing residencies (‘cause I’m at one, and I took an interesting journey to get here).
Thanks for practicing with me. Thanks for reading. Let me know your thoughts on or experiences with meditation and creativity.
xo Jen
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May 3, 2023
On compression: a flash workshop
I wrote a lot of flash fiction during quarantine. Flash is fun, offers (almost instant) gratification to both writer and reader, and it can break more rules than almost any other genre. I love it.
Also during the height of the pandemic, I was invited to put together some instructional materials that I never had the chance to share in a workshop on flash. I came across this workshop draft the other day and thought, why not share it on Substack?
So here we are. This one’s for the writers. And readers.
The following story is mine, originally published in LUNCH TICKET (which I wrote before the pandemic) and was reprinted in Dandelion Ghosts. After the story, I go through a little analysis and offer an exercise. If you write something from this, please share.
Our Sky, the Ocean
We were waiting for rain the day my sister stopped talking. We examined the swollen clouds and waited. Mom and Dad prattled on about the football game that was holding up traffic to I-10, the church talent show, the neighbor’s runaway Chihuahua, the sandwich shop opening on Fifth, and the sad state of our garden.
I chimed in from time to time, keeping an eye on my sister as she watered the vegetables. The broccoli and basil leaves were withering up like prunes, and the lettuce resembled the tops of Grandpa’s hands. My sister patted the ground and traced the leaves with her fingers, as though speaking to them without words.
“Do your job,” I told the sky.
The twenty-day drought was right on schedule. It was the middle of August, and droughts often hit the Texas panhandle this time of year. Still, no one was ever prepared.
I nudged Em, chuckling because our neighbor, Mr. Jerry, was bending over. It looked as though he might lose his pants, and I whispered as much. When she didn’t laugh with me, I began to worry.
I asked Em if she wanted to walk down to the Twenty & Below. We loved wandering the aisles and evaluating the clothes. We’d model fast-fashion dresses for each other, spinning and sashaying and giggling until we were asked to kindly calm down or, if Darling was working, to kindly shut up.
“Come on,” I coaxed. After a minute I said, “Do you think it will rain?” When Em didn’t answer, I said, “How much money you think we’ll earn if we help Mr. Jerry paint his garage next week?”
I asked more questions, so many I don’t remember.
Em responded with smiles and raised eyebrows, shrugs and tightened lips. She walked with urgency, as though excited, but she didn’t make a single sound.
“You okay?” I asked.
She smiled with a brightness I wasn’t used to.
“Why aren’t you talking?”
She examined me with her wide eyes. They were the same brown as our kitchen table, which Dad had stained extra dark, only they had flecks of gold at the edges. I wished I had her eyes. Mine were light blue like the sky on a day with no chance of rain.
Later, we ran around the store and tried on clothes, but my sister never opened her mouth to chuckle. Darling was working. She said, “You girls are being so good today. I’m impressed!” She gave us watermelon candies and instructed us to tuck them into our pockets for later.
My sister didn’t appear ill. At dinner, she ate her corn and mashed potatoes like a champ, even licking her plate clean as the rest of us chattered on about this and that. Toward the end of the meal, Em winked and gestured toward the door.
The air was pregnant with moisture. My parents were talking about who bought the house at the end of the street and why the teenager three doors down got fired from the automotive shop. They talked about how much the cell phone bill would be and what time they’d be home from work on Monday.
“Why aren’t you talking?” I asked again.
A year before, my sister had closed her eyes and refused to open them for almost the entire day. She had spent hours feeling around the house to get where she needed to go. After, when she finally opened them, she said that she had been trying out a different way to see.
My sister slipped the watermelon candy in her mouth. She felt the dry earth around our vegetables.
“It's like sand," I said. The sky was our ocean.
Em sat down on a patch of dirt and began to carve a message with a small stick. "Try it," she wrote.
I closed my lips, traced my finger over the wrinkled lettuce and looked up at the sky. Together, we waited. I could hear my parents talking about this and that, but after a while, I began to hear the wind too, then the whoosh of cars nearby. I began to understand.
The first drop of rain hit my arm and made all the little hairs stand up. The next drop landed on my cheek. My sister and I leaned back and closed our eyes, listening to the world, absorbing each drop.
Analysis
Flash fiction is all about the art of compression and brevity. There is no room to overexplain or use complicated metaphors that slow the narrative. Though flash fiction often employs beautiful language, it is also direct. Descriptions must be both concise and vivid. At times this seems difficult, but with intentional revision, a writer can include fewer details that contain the same potency and momentum as a longer story.
One way to achieve directness, potency, and momentum in a flash story is by knowing your characters and introducing them with well-chosen sensory details. Let’s look at “Our Sky, the Ocean.” After the narrator introduces Em through action, you find limited description used. Leveraging a single detail—eye color—characterization for both sisters deepens and the larger theme is brought in, which further emphasizes the tone of the story. While any detail may have been used here, the simple description of Em’s eyes presented a dynamic relationship, the overall theme, and an emotional tone.
She examined me with her wide eyes. They were the same brown as our kitchen table, which Dad had stained extra dark, only they had flecks of gold at the edges. I wished I had her eyes. Mine were light blue like the sky on a day with no chance of rain.
Instead of only stating that Em had brown eyes or, conversely, explaining everything about Em, I used one color and made it specific to lead to other details. The color of Em’s eyes is not only brown but the same color as a table their father had stained, extra dark and with flecks of gold. Not only does this detail offer insight into the girls’ father’s character, but it also highlights the narrator’s slight envy, as she aligns her own eyes with the drought: “Mine were light blue like the sky on a day with no chance of rain.” This detail offers contrast, emotional resonance, and it ties to the larger story.
When it comes to revising flash fiction, every detail is an opportunity to go deeper.
One way to know how and where to include certain details or compress your language is to get to know your characters better. As a writer, knowing your characters intimately allows you to better introduce them to the reader. This may mean jotting down details about them that you won’t necessarily bring up in the story. Let’s try a simple exercise.
May 2, 2023
On writing as an experiment
In business schools, the term “failing up” is popular. When you fail, the adage goes, you just continue to plug away at aims and goals with more wisdom and perspective. Writers often do things like keep or count rejections as a way of measuring progress.
If I’m being entirely honest, I believe I’ve failed up in life and writing, but I’ve also just failed. Plenty of times. And I’m not sure counting would be good for the healthy ego. To be kinder to myself about it, let’s put it this way: There have been many times when my anticipation did not match the outcome.
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While life is something that we either have control over or we don’t and different doctrines define the amount of control or lack thereof in different ways, one thing I like to take comfort in is that I can control my behavior to a point by educating myself and training myself to pause before reacting to circumstances. What I cannot control is the circumstance. And I can’t control the outcome. Not entirely. Not even with writing.
My own writing has been hit and miss over the years. I’ve published in over 200 journals between print and online magazines, a few anthologies, and I have three collections of fiction published with different presses; further, in the last three or four years, I’ve only submitted to those I truly hold in high regard. Some people count publications as a win, but I do not. I realized that some of the work I published was undercooked. While other works were cooked to perfection, and at least one or two stories were burnt at the edges.
I think part of me valued the safety of short work. Short stories are rarely critiqued too widely. This is largely because they are rarely read and remembered in the same way as longer works. The time investment simply isn’t there; therefore, neither is the dedication to complex thinking about the story—even if it’s truly great.
There are exceptions, of course, such as Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” or George Saunders’ “Sticks.” There are also story collections that use cohesion and themes to pull together a longer work from short literary inquiries and adventures. Short stories that are read and reread and reread again are anomalies in modern critique, however. Perhaps because there’s just too much information out there.
I believe I’ve had two or three of these over the course of two hundred or so catch on and find multiple reprints. These are the stories that end up in classrooms and textbooks. They take on a life of their own. But when I look back at these stories, I see only my own critique of the work. Am I fully satisfied? Mostly.
And what about others’ critiques? The novel may be more widely read, it’s also most certainly less immune to critique. Nor is any of it immune to outright criticism—logical and emotional.
There are people who do not like that I wrote about pagan practices and questioned mental health diagnoses in my novel, for instance, despite my painstaking efforts to approach these subjects with reverence but not dogma or diminishment.
On one platform, I got a 1-star rating from a religious reviewer before any other reviews came in on one platform (and before the book was available, so there’s that). Meanwhile, I’ve also received excellent reviews that say things like “I am not the target audience for this, but…” which confuses me because it implies I was targeting an audience (this is literary fiction, folks, I’m just happy to have a reader or two). But I got the implication. It’s about a bunch of women, so it must be for women. This is something that another’s experience would dictate to them.
There are also reviews that speak to the writing itself, which are usually written by fellow authors and are full of more specific, language-based praise or criticism (so far, praise, which is nice). These are valuable. Finally, there are critical reviews that attack an author, not the work.
The excellent reviews — those, I think we can all handle. But what to do with the others?
Many authors I know simply don’t read reviews that are not glowing. But I can’t help it. I’m curious. I’m also often curious about the critiques of books I’ve loved, and I find truly transformational books rarely boast only positive reviews.
I believe a book, when well done, will provoke. It will cause an emotional response. To find a critique of our work then is to understand that it may or may not be useful. It is NOT the same as a failure but a mere reflection of an equation. Work + reader = review. The reader is a factor. Their life experience and interpretation provide them with a single lens through which to view the story.
What is failure is an author’s dismay with shared work. A knowing that it wasn’t quite done or we listened to too many critiques and over-edited it. Our own critical reviews are where success and failure live.
But, alas, I believe we can fail up.
So I offer this exercise for writers who are unsure about whether they are ready to share a work. It’s a simple test to determine whether it’s under or overcooked.
Experiment:
a. Read your work as a critic might. Look for patterns and purpose and how the work transcends or does not transcend experience. Look at who the work leaves out and who the work is “for,” then decide how much that matters.
b. Write a review of your work. Just a paragraph or two.
This prompt may reveal flaws, but it will also prepare you for perspectives on work that are just that — not failures but responses. And those, we can control.
Thanks for reading!
xo jen
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