Writing Tip Wednesday--critics and writers

I remember in college I knew a professor who was a Shakespeare expert and claimed that if he could go back in time and give Shakespeare advice, he would tell him to write less. Because some of Shakespeare's plays are actually bad. On the one hand, I suppose I could wonder to myself who this professor thinks he is, that he should give Shakespeare advice. On the other hand, he may be right, at least in the sense that some of Shakespeare's plays are actually wretched. And even in my favorite plays, there are parts that I would change if I were going to rewrite them.

*But* I think the part that this professor doesn't get is that if Shakespeare had listened to the people around him who were telling him not to write as much, or that he was a hack, that he should quit while he was ahead, that only this play or that one was worth anything--guess what? Shakespeare might very well have stopped writing entirely before he got to the plays that we think today are valuable. Or he might have written a completely different set of plays that are unreadable now. Tastes do change and certain Shakespeare plays that are popular today have not always been the most popular ones.

When you're a critic, you worry about a completely different set of problems than when you are a writer, and that is the way that it has to be. For a writer, you have to think about how to keep going. It's hard enough to get that first novel published. Next to impossible, really. The odds against it are astronomical. But if I my math is right, the odds against getting a second novel published actually get worse. And the odds of making a living as a writer or even just having a career where you continue being published--well, let's just say I wouldn't bet on it.

In order to keep writing, you have to be able to tune out all those critical voices and focus instead on what is important to you. How do you know if it will be important to other people? You don't. And actually, you can't. And I would argue, if you try to figure that out, you will always end up failing. You will cut your creative self short. Mostly, we have to write the best way we can. We write whatever we can, and then we try to make it better. When it's the best that we can do, we let others see it and then it isn't ours any more. Or at least, the part that ours is distinct from the part that belongs to everyone else.


This is one of the many reasons that I think sometimes that spending so many years getting a PhD in literary criticism was one of the worst things I could do as a writer. Yes, it forced me to do a lot of reading and that was good. It also forced me to think about reception of work, about genius, about critical reception centuries later, about historical and cultural influences, and lots of things that would make a writer go insane with fear. Fear is the enemy of creativity. Not pain. Pain is the friend of creativity, I suspect.

So put your blinders on. Write what is given you to write, and then write something else. Let the critics do their job, and you do yours.