New Story - Permission to Land - Lessons Learned & Thoughts Blog · 9:45pm Jul 24th, 2016
So, today I published a story called "Permission to Land" which was submitted to Writeoff.me for their End of an Era competition. I didn't get past the elimination round, but I thought I'd still take a chance to talk about the story.
Er, rather. I'm going to talk about what this story has taught me. If that makes sense.
Erm. I suppose I should talk about the story too. Hmm... How can I make this brief?
Have you read a Broken Wing Rainbow Dash story? Yeah? Substitute Spitfire for all of it. I guess it's okay. I dunno. I'm not sure it's really the -best- of it's genre, but it's one of the first that does it using Spitfire. So there's that I guess.
I think that about sums it up.
Now then, I want to talk about what writing this nearly 4k story has taught me, which is way more valuable than the moral that Permission to Land tries to deliver. Something something... qualities of a leader. Today and for the rest of this blog, I want to talk about understanding criticism and what it means to become "Better" at something.
Note: In this blog, I talk about some emotional stuff. I'd like to reiterate that I'm fine. None of this is intended to gain sympathy from you guys. Instead, I hope someone can learn from my failures to better themselves. Thus, I'm sharing this tid-bit.
When I submitted this piece to the writeoff, I had a few great editors look at it to ensure none of my usual "technical" issues existed after release. There were some fantastic criticisms given to me from my usual editors, and I took them with stride. I stood up on my soapbox and submitted this piece thinking "Oh yeah. I'll make finals."
Spoiler: It didn't
Which, I mean, that's fine. Not placing well in a competition isn't really much skin off my back. I did my best, given the time frame I had to write a competition piece and still balance my IRL priorities. But none of this really points to a lesson learned yet. All of this is just background to what really happened. And I'm not sure if I can properly explain what I learned without adding full context.
Last Wednesday I had an emotional breakdown. Shit's been... well. Shitty. There are quite a few areas in my life that I'm less than pleased with. Things I could have done better. Things I failed at. Things I'm not quite up to snuff with. Things I had been neglecting. And I'll simply say the stress of it all simply became too much for me in that moment. So I had to take a bit of time to reconstruct myself from the ground up.
In the wake of this emotional breakdown, I found myself reading the critiques that I had received from the other writeoff Contestants. Who are all great by the way. I can't thank them enough for the critique. Nothing they did was wrong, in the slightest. As I read the feedback I got for my story... I noticed something specifically lacking from the critiques. Not a single "this was well written" or "good job" was explicitly said anywhere. At least, in my emotional state. It took a helping hand to see where the compliments were in the critique as well as learn a specific lesson.
I suppose I should stop beating around the bush and say what I've learned, huh? Well, here it is.
When you finish a piece of writing, and get critiqued on it, a good critique doesn't have to touch on what you did well. If you did something well, it doesn't need to be improved, so it isn't really worth noting. The focus of a critique is to bring the very most out of a piece as possible. That means focusing on where the piece is weak. So, if you aren't getting a lot of "Good jobs" or "Well writtens", it doesn't mean your piece is bad.
See, I learned something about myself. I had become a praise junkie. That's the simple truth. I became so reliant on external verification and "good jobs" and "well dones" to feel like a decent writer that... well. I lost sight of my goals in writing. Without trying to rely on one of my favorite movies for quotes... I'll try to summarize. The goal of a piece isn't to hear "Well done" or "good job". The goal of a piece is to move a reader to feel something or to learn something. Not get praise for it. Critiques work to help improve that effect through manipulating the reader in the right ways. Critiques are -never- about telling you "good job" or "well done" because, well. Then that means you don't need to improve. You can become stagnant. Stop reaching. Stop practicing. Because you'll be content with where you're at.
And, well. I think that's what I needed to understand. I try to be a humble person. I really, really ... at least try. Because I fear what having an ego means. I've met people from across the fandom that have egos and it's almost repulsive at times. And I feared I'd ever grow one. In the process of fearing that... I realized I did create an ego, inadvertently. Not a good ego either. I realized I was dismissing critiques or comments that didn't explicitly say what I was doing right. And... well. That's not good. It's REALLY not good.
I'm sure the problem I'm trying to explain is a bit clearer now. And I wanted to ensure I put an end to that problem.
I think what I needed to realize is that, a slight amount of ego, kept in check, is not a problem. It really isn't. I think I'm comfortable enough to say that I'm a decent writer. I have the ability to write good things, when I put my mind to it. And, if I write something that I think is good, when people say something about it is bad, I need to suck it up and take the critiques like a professional, rather than dwell about how this means I'm terrible.
I've got a lot of growing to do in the realm of writing. This experience really cemented that for me. If my goal is to be published some day in some sort of fiction magazine, then it's time I developed a more professional set of skin. Thick skin. And have enough of an ego that I can realize that criticism isn't meant to beat me down or hurt me, but rather help me improve by showing where things are weak.
I realize all of this is a bit... silly now in hindsight, and like I mentioned, I'm not saying any of this to try to gain sympathy. Whatever happens with this story, happens. Tomorrow is another day and another story, and I'm just happy I'm on the right foot with a fresh state of mind.
I want to improve as a writer, and I suppose now I have a bit of a better outlook to really begin to do that.
Thanks for... enduring my ramblings, I suppose. I didn't intend to have this go on for so long. Onto another day, and onto another piece of writing, which will hopefully better than the last. And the next one better than the previous, and so on.
Hey. You probably don't remember me. It's been a long while. It's funny to think this is something you learned recently. I still remember most, if not all, of your critique on my story from memory alone. From those few comments you made, hearing this now surprises me. I thought you gave a pretty solid critique of my absolutely noobish writing. And since you gave a solid critique, I thought you understood what it means to receive solid critiques. Well, I'm glad to hear that you learned this now. It might be counter-productive but...seriously, keep up the good work. Because in my eyes, it's been good work for the most part. I'll just be here reading what you put out next.
Also, office love when?
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Haha. I totally remember you. No worries, friend. Thank you for the kind words.
Good for you, my man.
I actually realized this a long time ago. I wrote a lot of stories I didn't even give much effort to and post it anonymously for people to see. I then checked back later for the feedback and all I got were comments like "wtf hahaha great job" and "lmao this is great". At first, they brought smiles to my face. Then, it got boring after a while, and I began to look for the hate comments. I realized I'm not being told what I'm doing wrong. I'm not improving at all.
See, I never wanted to have a name, but I realized that making people feel is why I should write and also why I read. Maybe also explains why I'd prefer helping other people on their stories and writing by proxy.
I'm happy for you.