[mplpost] Reviews Blues - Thanks!

[Lynn Harrison]

Hi everyone,

I just want to thank all of you for your honest and generous posts on the topic of reviews.  Your kind words made me feel a lot better (as did a hot bath and a glass of wine, by the way).  Many of you were very open about sharing your horror stories...I appreciated both the personal reflections and the professional advice.  

In an earlier post, I recommended a book by Brenda Ueland called “If You Want to Write”.  I consulted her (during the wine/bath thing, while my children were at the neighbour's across the street...hmm, maybe bad reviews aren't all bad after all).  Anyway here's what she had to say on the subject.  

“If you write something and they all tell you it is bad—editors, critics, everybody—think it over and you may become convinced that they are right (though you are not to be ashamed or discouraged for a minute, but keep on writing).  But if they all tell you it is bad and you still think in your soul that what you wrote is good—if you find that you still believe what you wrote and believe it to be true to you, then you must stand by it.”

“…I don’t like critics, whether they are English professors, or friends, or members of one’s family, or men of letters on literary reviews.  It is so easy for them to annihilate us, first by discouragement and then by shackling our imagination in rules so that we cannot work freely and well on the next thing.  //  Nobody knows better than I how sensitive writers are.  But it is inevitable.  It is nothing to be ashamed of.  Since our wish to create something is the life of the Spirit, I think that when people condemn what we do, they are symbolically destroying us.  Hence the excruciatingly painful feeling, though to our common sense it feels foolish and self-centred to feel so badly.”

Brenda Ueland was the author of two books, many articles and short stories. “If You Want to Write” was first published in 1938.  It was based on her experiences as a creative writing instructor at a Minneapolis YWCA.  Brenda Ueland lived to be 93, and said she had only two rules she followed absolutely: to tell the truth and not to do anything she didn’t want to do. 

Thanks again,

Love,

Lynn 



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