This month I'll be highlighting some of the top-notch poetry published in the last year--so top-notch that it was deemed by the Cybils Award Round 1 panel to be a finalist for the award.  As a Round 2 judge, I'm going to share some excerpts from each book this month.  Since it finally got cold here in Maryland this week, I'll begin with...

Winter Bees and Other Poems of the Cold
by Joyce Sidman

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014

This book, illustrated by Rick Allen using a complicated combination of linoleum block prints hand-colored, "digitally scanned, composed, and layered," contains just 12 poems.  Some are free verse and some are rhymed and metered.  This collection has received 5 starred reviews and almost a dozen awards, including in 2014, since it was published in November of 2014.

excerpt from "Winter Bees"

We scaled a million blooms
to reap the summer's glow.
Now, in the merciless cold,
we share each morsel of heat,
each honeyed crumb.
We cram to a sizzling ball
to warm our queen, our heart, our home.

excerpt from "Chickadee's Song"

The sun wheels high, the cardinal trills.
We sip the drips of icicles.
The buds are thick, the snow is slack.
Spring has broken winter's back.

How's that for a little taste of the cold?

Please join Tabatha for some more of the muscle and grace of great poetry--she's got the Roundup at The Opposite of Indifference today.

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The renowned YouTube personality looks into the role Shakespeare plays in the Vertigo series.

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Recently a friend asked me whether she should address the concerns of a beta reader who had clearly missed something in her novel that everyone else got. This started me thinking about the challenges in revising a story when you’ve received critiques from many different people, particularly when their comments contradict each other.

We’ve talked a lot at Publishing Crawl about revising your novel on your own and with editorial letters, but what about earlier in the process — maybe before your book even reaches agents or publishers? I am a big believer in beta readers and critique groups, and I participate in an amazing writing group. Almost every piece of fiction I have written has benefited from the sharp insights of other writers who tell me what’s working and what needs work, and call me out when I’m being lazy. If you’re fortunate, there will be a consensus, a clear sign to what you should focus on, but often there’s very different feedback from everyone, and it isn’t at all obvious who is “right” about your story. Now what?

First and foremost, it’s your story, so you have to follow your instincts. That said, you do have to be open to the possibility that you can make it even better by listening to suggestions you may not immediately agree with. And always remember that you can’t make everyone happy, but that isn’t the point; you’re trying to figure out how to make the story as good as it can be, which should also be the goal of your critiquers.

My record for critiques on a single piece is probably around twenty, for some of my short stories at the Clarion West Writers Workshop, which is where I developed my process for juggling feedback and planning a revision strategy. Whether I have seven or 17 critiques, my first step is to read through everyone’s comments and my notes from the crit session, jotting down the key points and organizing them into four categories:

1. I totally agree with this comment and I will definitely do this
2. I disagree with this note, but they’re probably right, so I’d better fix that
3. That’s very interesting, I’ll keep that in mind
4. Nope

Although here I’m focusing on what needs to be improved in the next draft, make sure you’re also noticing the good stuff, which can show you where your story is on the right track, as well as give you an ego boost that is likely sorely needed about now. This is the stuff you don’t want to break when you’re fiddling with everything around it — which can easily happen, especially if you’re trying to follow every suggestion you received.

Once you’ve listed everything out, categories 1 and 2 should give you a pretty clear idea of what changes to make in your revision; however, sometimes you will get two or more recommendations that are  incompatible, and you have to choose one. Assuming you don’t want to settle for the fastest and easiest fix, you should consider what makes the most sense for your characters and their story, and what fits with the rest of the feedback you’ve received and strengthens what was already there.

You can also consider the source of the feedback: For example, if you’re writing a YA novel, you might weigh criticism from other YA writers or readers more heavily than feedback from someone who rarely reads YA or doesn’t enjoy it. (Their perspective is still valuable and probably shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand, but they may be unaware of some of the nuances of your particular genre.) Or certain readers “get” your work or connect with your story more than others, so they have a better idea of what you were trying to accomplish.

Once I have a sort of road map of the changes I want to make, I usually dive in and start editing from beginning to end, in a linear order, layering in changes as I go. Of course every edit ripples throughout the piece, so the more time I can spend focused on and immersing myself in the story, the better to keep it all in my head, and ultimately put it on the page. I’m also keeping in mind some of the criticism that I am less sure about, or even some of those “nopes,” because as the story changes, they might make more sense or I’ve become more receptive to them. As I change the story, I feel more free to take it wherever it needs to go. If I take it too far or it doesn’t work, I can always revert back to the previous draft!

When I first started revising this way, it sometimes felt like I was writing by committee, and I resisted taking too many suggestions from others. Whose story is this, anyway? But if you’re committed to telling it in the best possible way, so it will reach the most readers, getting lots of feedback from many different perspectives is incredibly helpful. Don’t forget that every reader is different — just look all those wildly differing reviews on Goodreads! (No, don’t.) In a way, they’re all correct, because reading is such a personal, unique experience. And so is writing. In the end, you decide what your story will be, and you’re the only person who can write it.

Everyone’s writing and revision process  is also unique! So, how do you reconcile varying feedback from multiple readers?

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In the school market, the content of the books we sell is paramount- especially in Young Adult Fiction, where the topics don’t always fall in line with the values of the particular community. For this reason, many of our school boards have a review process in place to evaluate the suitability of materials being considered for purchase in a school.

Recently, a reviewer lodged a complaint about one of the submitted books because the story is loosely based on a political scandal that took place in our city, and the resemblance of the main character to the political person involved offended the reader to the point that it’s been deemed unsuitable for purchase by any school in that board. The author has previously published middle-grade novels, and is a journalist/editor as well, but isn’t what we’d call a recognizable name, or someone who will likely be reviewed by professional journals. What especially bothered me about this (other than feeling like the positive messages in the book were overlooked) is that I suspect that had the author been one of those big names, I don’t think that it would have been as offensive to the reader.

Whether you are a bookseller/educator/librarian or reader, there are certain authors whose books we purchase sight unseen. A new book by Mr/Ms Superstar is a no brainer, and we seldom stop to ask what it’s about. One such superstar author has frequently taken on headline-making subjects, and the books are generally well-executed. The author is frequently applauded for having a finger on the pulse, and appears on multiple awards lists on an almost annual basis. Whether or not this superstar author would ever write about this particular subject is besides the point, but this got me thinking about whether or not these authors are a bit like the Emperor from the popular Andersen fairy tale.

In the fairy tale, two weavers promise the Emperor a suit of clothes that will be invisible to anyone who is unfit for their position, stupid or incompetent. When the Emperor parades around naked in front of his subjects, everybody is afraid to tell him that there is new suit, and instead praise the non-existent suit of clothes. All except for the one child who has the courage to call him out.

Publishing is a business, and just like any business, it has to make money. If a publisher is fortunate enough to have a John Green or a James Patterson in their stable, of course they want to ensure that the author is well-treated and happy, (again, just like any business does with their clients) but perhaps it’s gone too far to the point of publishers, reviewers & readers alike being held hostage by these emperor status authors, making them unwilling or unable to criticize something for fear of seeming stupid or incompetent or of being criticized by the author’s fans on Social Media- especially when the same book by a lesser known or less popular author would be torn to shreds.

I’m not suggesting that all of these authors are like the emperor and not deserving of their superstar status, but my question is whether or not we allow them more slack because of that reputation, and if in doing so, we’re doing the author, the book, and the readers a great injustice.

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Isn't Charles McGrath a right voice in our time?

(Wait. Did that sound critical?)

This week the New York Times Book Review asked Charles McGrath and Adam Kirsch the question: Is Everyone Qualified to Be a Critic? It's a question I often ask myself. A question I've been asking myself for the past 20 years, in fact—throughout my reviews of many hundreds of books for print and online publications, my jottings on behalf of the competitions I've judged, and my meanderings on this blog.

What makes me qualified? Am I qualified? And do I do each book—whether or not I like it—justice?

I do know this: If my mind is dull, if I am distracted, if I feel rushed, if I've grown just a tad weary of this trend or that affect, I won't review a book, not even on this blog, where I own the real estate. Writers (typically) work too hard to be summarily summarized, falsely cheered, unhelpfully glossed. Reviews should only be treated as art (as compared, say, to screed or self-glorification). It's important, as McGrath notes, that we reviewers keep reviewing ourselves.

His words:

It’s surprising how much contemporary critical writing is a chore to get through, not just on blogs and in Amazon reviews but even in the printed paragraphs appearing below some prominent bylines, where you find too often the same clichés, the same tired vocabulary, the same humorless, joyless tone. How is it, you wonder, that people so alert to the flaws of others can be so tone deaf when it comes to their own prose? The answer may be the pressure of too many deadlines, or the unwritten law that requires bloggers and tweeters to comment practically around the clock. Or it may be that the innately critical streak of ours too frequently has a blind spot: ourselves.

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This July, the OUP Philosophy team will be honoring Jacques Derrida as their Philosopher of the Month. Jackie (Jacques) Élie Derrida (15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was a French philosopher born to an Algerian Jewish family in El-Biar, Algeria. Derrida is widely known as the founder of the Deconstructionist movement. At the age of 22, Derrida began studying philosophy in Paris at the École Normale Supérieure where phenomenology and Edmund Husserl were influential elements in his training.

The post Philosopher of the month: Jacques Derrida appeared first on OUPblog.

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In Kieron Gillen’s talk on Alan Moore’s and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen, Gillen emphasizes themes of time and cyclicality present in Moore’s graphic novel.  Temporal symbolism recurs in everything from the Doomsday clock interstitials between chapters to Rorschach’s ever-shifting face to Dr. Manhattan’s past as the son of a watchmaker.  Gillen, working alongside artist Jamie McKelvie, colorist Matt Wilson, and letterer Clayton Cowles, emphasizes similar themes of cyclicality in the Eisner-nominated series The Wicked + The Divine.

The work is shaping up to be a structural masterpiece in the vein of Watchmen and the conclusion to the series’ second arc, Fandemonium, releases next week.  In honor of this, I’d like to take a moment to explore some of the recurring elements of the series that reexamine where we’ve been and clue us into the future of the series.

 

First Act

The premiere arc of the series is lovingly titled The Faust Act.  In it, the team establishes Laura, who is our muggle POV character, and the majority of the gods present for the 2014 Recurrence. Ultimately, we see one of those gods abruptly exit stage left.  The source of this arc’s name comes from Christopher Marlowe’s 16th century play The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Dr. Faustus.  In the work, Faustus makes a  deal with the devil Mephistopheles: infinite knowledge in exchange for eternal damnation.  Throughout the play, Faustus reveals himself to be hapless despite receiving near-infinite power.  Mephistopheles dances around the philosophical questions that Faustus poses to him and Faust spends the rest of his time conducting pointless experiments.   He is ultimately damned despite begging for salvation.

This basically summarizes Lucifer’s arc in The Faust Act.  She receives the gift of godhood and then wastes it by wasting two assassins who couldn’t kill her anyways. Ultimately, she is executed despite begging for forgiveness.  While it is clear that Luci killed her assassins, debate has raged within and outside of the text as to whether or not Luci killed the judge that tried her for her crimes.  After issue ten revealed that there was no link between the death of the judge and the attempt on Luci’s life, I decided to go back and look for some textual (or should it be panel) evidence that points to the identity of the judge’s killer.  I keep coming back to these two pages:

I don’t believe that the WicDiv team is making this connection for giggles.  I think Luci killed the judge.  In issue 10, David Blake, the organizer of a Pantheon studies convention called Ragnarock, tells Laura that “we’ll never know for sure” who committed the crime, and I’m inclined to believe that that means Team WicDiv won’t ever give us a firm answer to the question.  They want us to speculate, and it would certainly fit the Faustian trope if Luci were the catalyst for her own demise.  The excerpted page from the first issue symbolizes her sealing her damnation, and the page from the fifth issue represents her begging for salvation.

Why would she do this to herself?  Well, throughout the series, we see several gods perform.  Amaterasu, Baphomet, The Morrigan, and most recently, Urdr.  We never see Luci perform, but during her imprisonment, she feeds Laura this line:

What if Luci’s tragic story was her performance, and The Faust Act her stage?  Her guiding principle throughout the comic is freedom, but at the end of the first issue, she allows herself to be arrested.  There’s no reason why a few human police should be able to arrest a miracle maker.  Later on, Luci demonstrates as much by melting through her holding cell as though it were made of wax.  Luci is in control of everything throughout The Faust Act.  Everything except for the inevitability of her death.

When Luci becomes a god, the spiritual guide of the gods, Ananke, tells Luci that she will be dead within two years.  All the gods will.  That’s the cruel joke of the Recurrence: you get the freedom to do anything except stave off your rapidly approaching death. It’s the ultimate encroachment upon one’s freedom, and the only way Luci can see to cheat the inevitable and reclaim that freedom is to die on her own terms.  Getting arrested, killing the judge, breaking out of prison, and getting killed were the acts of Lucifer’s performance, and it inspires gods and men alike.

 

Whose story?

Towards the end of The Faust Act, Luci gives Laura a cigarette.  After Luci’s death, Laura snaps her fingers like a god, and is amazed to watch the cigarette light.  Throughout the second arc, we’ve watched Laura snap her fingers constantly, trying to recreate the magic and take her place as a god.  However, when Cassandra is revealed to be the twelfth god, that door is closed to Laura forever.  It seems, as this interstitial puts it, that The Wicked + The Divine is:

 

One of the most common criticisms I’ve heard levied against Wic+Div is that Laura, ostensibly the series’ main character, doesn’t actually get much to do.  She’s standing, dumbfounded, in the spotlight while all the gods are throwing fireballs and resurrecting people in the wings behind her.  To some extent, this is true.  Laura isn’t a protagonist in this series like Dream was in The Sandman.  However, this is also the point.  She’s not there to inspire.  She’s there to be inspired.  The first two arcs of the story take place over six short months, and Laura is already a dramatically different person.  Check out these two layouts:

In the first chapter, Laura is starstruck.  Luci is a capital G-O-D god.  Laura looks up at Luci as she takes her hand and is led into a world beyond her and the reader’s imagination.  She’s dressed up as Amaterasu and actively seeks to become someone else.  By the time the fifth issue rolls around, Laura’s no longer hiding.  She isn’t playing at being a god.  She’s a friend of the gods.  Instead of looking up to them, she sees their flaws, and thus is portrayed above Luci.

At one point, Baal makes a telling statement:

The gods don’t change the world.  They only appear every 90 years and disappear after two.  The gods empower regular people like Laura, and people like her–people like us change the world.  Laura doesn’t “do” much because she’s still in the process of being born.  As long as the gods are here, her actions will always be visually trumped by the flashy powers of the Pantheon.  However, even without powers, she’s managed to drive a great deal of the action in the series and inspire a lot of people.  Even David Blake, who once said that she’s “learned so little that [her] opinion is pretty much void,” turns around by the end of the second arc and admits that he was wrong.

Gillen’s writer’s notes on the first issue serve as a piece of extratextual evidence that supports this reading of Laura.  In his blog post, he writes that Laura’s name is inspired by the eponymous Bat For Lashes song.

Some choice lines include:

“Your heart broke when the party died.”

“You’re more than a superstar.”

 

“You’ll be famous for longer than them.”

People may hate on Laura, but she is the key to understanding The Wicked + The Divine because she’s going to be the last woman standing at the end of the series.  She didn’t inherit the spirit of the gods.  She’s inheriting something better: the Promethean gift of their knowledge.  What’s left to be seen is what she does with that gift, but I have some ideas…

Once again, we return…

Ananke utters the same words at the end of the 1920s recurrence and as Cassandra takes her place as Urdr, the last god needed to complete the 2014 pantheon.  Ananke is focused on the positive elements of cyclicality in these scenes, looking forward to the future and the beginning of the Recurrence cycles.  She neglects to mention the end of the statement.

Once again we return

to this.

In two years, her children will be dead.  Again.  She doesn’t say it, but the sentiment is revealed on her face as she watches the last of the 1920s pantheon die.  Interestingly, although Ananke is the constant and undying element of necessity that persists between pantheons, she seems to have aged dramatically over the past 90 years.  Now granted, she wasn’t exactly starring in Dove commercials in 1923 (I can’t think of a contemporary joke, sue me), but the last century seems to have worn her down and given her more wrinkles than the time stream of Looper.  She says as much in an interview with Cassandra:

Now, this is pretty foreboding.  When Laura visits Valhalla for the first time in issue four, one of the major reasons why the other gods won’t help end Luci’s imprisonment is because it could mean the end of all Recurrences.  Forever.  As Ananke says:

Superficially, one could say that Ananke fears that humans will literally kill the gods.  Now, as has been demonstrated time and time again (bullets curve around gods), this is exceedingly difficult.  However, what if humans simply stopped believing in the gods’ ability to inspire?  Ananke says that the “inspiration will leave the world forever” without the gods, but can she back up that statement?  The years have worn on Ananke and the 2014 Recurrence is not going well.  Perhaps the fault for that doesn’t lie with any of the gods.  Perhaps mankind simply doesn’t need them anymore.  To quote Nietzsche (which is always a good idea, I promise):

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers…must we ourselves not become gods…?”

Now, this is the point in the article where analysis-based hypothesizing becomes almost pure extrapolation and guesswork, so be warned.  However, I think The Wicked + The Divine is showing us the last Recurrence ever.  In Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, the author plays with the idea that gods are powered by the strength of human belief.  They exist only as long as people need them to.  If Team WicDiv is drawing from this particular school of thought, then we could be witnessing the last recurrence ever because the cycle of rebirth has run out its usefulness.  The gods were originally created to “light the spark” that allows mankind to beat back an oppressive darkness and begin the construction of civilization.  Civilization was constructed.  Civilization has lasted.  The recurrence is a cycle, a circle, a set of training wheels for mankind.  Now it’s time for them to come off.  We are witnessing the end of the era of gods as men and the beginning of the era of mankind as gods.  Who might lead mankind towards that era?  Why, Laura of course.

Let’s look back at Laura grasping Luci’s hand in issue five:

Michaelangelo’s The Creation of Adam is probably one of the most famous paintings in the world.  God, on the right, is about the breathe life into Adam, the first man, on the left.  Laura, on the right, gives strength to Luci on the left.  Laura is the god in this allusive panel.  She is the person, “rare and blessed,” who can hear everything that “all the gods have to say,” which makes her the perfect leader for humanity when they’re gone.

How the Recurrence will end and the identity of the ultimate “darkness” that threatens civilization has yet to be seen, but I’m interested to know what you all think of the postulations above.  Let me know in the comments or tweet @waxenwings.

As a final thought and not to take away from the gravitas of this moment, but I think it’s funny that Laura’s still wearing a coat in issue 9 even though it’s almost July.  Girl is frigid.

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by

Alex Bracken

—

On Saturday morning, as I was scrolling through my Twitter feed, I came across an article written by another author, describing the great lengths she had gone to to track down and, I guess, expose a reviewer she felt was too harsh and inaccurate in her review of this author’s work. The author describes the supposed harassment she received from this reviewer in the weeks that followed, and, after some “light stalking” (there is no such thing as “light stalking,” just stalking) of this reviewer’s social media, she ultimately showed up on the reviewer’s doorstep to confront her. I think we are all in agreement that this act was 100% unacceptable behavior and terribly, horribly frightening for the reviewer who had every right to protect her identity online. I’m fairly certain you all know what I’m talking about, but rather than link you to the essay, I will point you in the direction of posts from Dear Author and Smart Bitches, Trashy Books for a better, balanced discussion.

What I want to talk about today are ways to cope with negative criticism as an author. We all receive it. We all see it. And if you haven’t reached that step of your career yet, well, you should expect it and start conditioning yourself to handle it now. It’s easy to think that you can take a rational stance when it comes to getting feedback about your work, but there are so many emotions at play here, that I think many authors are surprised by how gut-deep they feel negative words (and how easy it is to ignore the positive). I’ll be the first to admit that I was not great at coping when my first book was published in 2010. I stalked my Google Alerts and the book’s GoodReads page. Every good review was like a hit of wonderful sunshine-y rainbows, and I’d keep coming back for more… but then I’d see a critical review and it would smack me down into this dark “maybe I do suck” place. So what formed was a cycle and I knew I was going to have to break it if I wanted any sort of career.  Here is what has helped me:

1) Don’t read reviews. Plain and simple, do not read reviews, good or bad. This is the only thing that has ultimately saved my sanity and allowed me to be productive. It’s obviously easier said than done, especially when a book is first coming out and you’re dying to hear what people think. You will never be able to stop with just one review. I recommend staying off GoodReads entirely, but I actually do think it’s important for authors to have a presence there so they can update their books’ information pages and respond to questions and messages. If you find you need a hit of GR, I recommend bookmarking the Readers Questions page for each book or your author dashboard and really keeping to just those pages. You can also add books you’re currently reading without looking at your own books’ pages–don’t sneak a peek. If you find yourself with a crippling addiction to checking on the average or seeing if anyone new is reading it, block GoodReads on your browser.

My one exception to this rule is that I do read professional reviews from trade publications like PublishersWeekly and Kirkus Reviews, because those publications are used by librarians to see if they should purchase the books for their libraries. But you can always ask your editor to hold the reviews back if you really don’t want to see anything.

2) Remember that not every reader is on GoodReads. GR is a fantastic community of book lovers, but if you were to ask the average person on the street what they thought of it, a lot of people would just blink at you in confusion. Bad reviews may feel like someone is trying to mock or humiliate you (they’re not) for public consumption, but that public is actually just a fraction of the number of people reading your books. Don’t believe me? Check your royalty statement against the people who have marked the book as ‘read.’

3) We are all students. The goal of any writer should be to improve and grow with each book. No matter how perfect you think the story is, there is always room for improvement. Embrace that idea, and, if you must-must-must read reviews, learn to recognize a real critique someone is giving you versus a statement about their personal taste, the latter of which is completely out of your control. (eg “This author didn’t spend enough time developing the secondary characters.” versus “I didn’t like XX character. I thought they were annoying.”)

4) Trust reviewers to know their tastes. One thing I’ve learned over the years of getting to know book bloggers and reviewers is that they know what’s going to work for them and what’s not going to work for them. They can read another reviewer’s negative review and recognize, oh, s/he doesn’t like this element in books, but I do, and still purchase or request it. They can even recommend a book they, personally, didn’t like to another reviewer/friend who they think will.

5) Bad reviews are better than no reviews. Trust me.

5.5) THREE STARS MEANS “I LIKED IT.” THEY LIKED IT. THEY DID. IT’S NOT LIKE GETTING A “C” GRADE. THEY LIKED IT. GETTING THREE STARS IS ACTUALLY NICE, OKAY? REMEMBER THAT.

6) Keep the old adage in mind: taste is subjective. Think of your group of friends and family. Think about a movie you all saw, or a book you all read that you, personally loved. Not everyone agreed with you, right? Everyone found their own problem with the story or characters that they fixated on. Readers bring their own world with them to a story, and that informs how they read it and how they enjoy it. I think it was Dita Von Teese who said, “You can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world, but there’s still going to be someone who hates peaches.” I will repeat that to myself over and over if I have to until it clicks in my brain. My epiphany moment came, again, with my first book. I was deep down into the GR rabbit hole, torturing myself by looking at all of the negative reviews, and had a moment of, “Well, what else has this reviewer hated?” Reader, this reviewer hated a lot of books that I myself had given five stars to.

7) Don’t respond to reviews, good or bad. Do not respond. DO NOT RESPOND. If someone includes you when they tweet out the link to the review, you can say thank you, but do not leave comments on their blog, do not leave comments on the GR review. Reviewers are reviewing the books for other readers, not for you. Not even for your publisher. Other readers.

8) Know that you can still be friends with bloggers, even if they didn’t like your book. You are not your book(s). You are an awesome person, and awesome people can be friends with other awesome people. Much like you can be friends with other authors never having read their books or not liking them very much. A negative review isn’t a sign that you’re being shunned, just that your book did not work for that reviewer. But, hey! You both love Sleepy Hollow, so why not chat about that on Twitter instead?

9) Make it so the people who love your work can find you and you can banish the negative voices. The best thing I ever did in this regard was set up a PO Box and an author email account for readers to contact me. Because the ones that are taking the time to write to you are the ones who either are thinking critically about your story enough to have pressing questions or because they love it. You might occasionally get a message from someone who has strong beliefs that contradict what you’re saying in your books, but those will always be fewer than the chorus of sweet, awesome voices of the readers you reached and affected on a personal level. If someone is being a troll on Twitter to you, block them. Done. If you track Tumblr tags of your name or book title, install an extension or plug-in like Tumblr Hatred that lets you hide posts you’d rather not see each time you check the tags.

10) Shake it off. Yes. Like TSwift is telling you to. One of my favorite lyrics in that song is Just think while you’ve been getting down and out about the liars and the dirty, dirty cheats of the world/You could’ve been getting down to this sick beat. Basically, your energy is WAY better spent thinking and caring about the people who like your book. As I said above, don’t ignore a hundred voices telling you they like your stuff in favor of the one or two voices who are basically just saying “eh… not my cup of tea.” There are certainly going to be reviews that are way harsher than that in your lifetime, ones you think go too far. The best response is still no response. It’s getting up from your computer and going to do something you love. Or, you know, turning off the internet and writing. Anything that affects your productivity isn’t worth your time.

—

Alex lives in New York City where she writes like a fiend and lives in a charming apartment overflowing with books. She is the New York Times bestselling author of The Darkest Minds and Never Fade. You can visit her online at her website, Tumblr, or Twitter.

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Michael Sedano

La Bloga’s Saturday columnist Rudy Ch. Garcia reviewed Boy Zorro and the Bully (El Niño Zorro y el Peleón). Published in English and Spanish, Rudy calls it “a Latino book” on how to handle bullying, finding Boy Zorro on the whole worthwhile. Click here to read the review and Comments from Rudy's July 26 column.

The publisher and author wrote back, objecting to calling Boy Zorro "a Latino book, arguing that "using Spanish merely makes the topic accessible to more readers". Author, Kat A. expresses restrained anger when she avers,

Rudy. Rudy. Rudy. You practically missed the book altogether. Starting with the misclassification of it as “A Latino Book”. This is a book about “Bullying”. You made it a book about Latinos and then used the book as a platform to go off into different tangents about race, skin color, lack of female representation…are you helping or hurting those who actually do something

The publisher, Katherine Del Monte, focuses on the positive messages the book conveys, only once tangentially acknowledging Garcia’s critique that illustrations paint everyone except one kid and the principal pink.

Mr. Ramos, the principal, does the right thing, stays strong, and all outcomes are favorable – no matter their skin color or race.

The author and publisher’s responses reflect one of those hard facts of writing: once the writer has sent the piece “out there,” it belongs to the reader. And the critic.

Sadly, "criticism" has come to mean its lowest common denominator, fault-finding and punishment, so people hate criticism. Maybe it's part of the national character, to take critique as a personal affront.

To be criticized is good. In its most exalted form, criticism compares a concept of perfection to the work at hand and declares how the piece at hand measures up to perfection. Most literary criticism reflects versions of the latter. It shouldn't sting. Indeed, it's an honor to be compared to perfection.

A reader or critic comes to a title with her or his own expectations for the book and reads it through the lens of expectation, plus one’s capacity for the writer’s style and invention. In writing the critique, the critic will say what he or she likes, what he or she doesn’t like, and offer qualitative observations related to the work.

In Rudy's critique, he likes Boy Zorro for its critically important message. His enthusiasm is tempered by ways the book could do a better job for its readers.

Whatever the assessment—love it, hate it, wish it was something else—it belongs to the critic and reflects that critic's sensibility. A work “means” what the reader says it means, regardless of the author’s or publisher’s intent. We do, of course, share a language, so most of the time, we "get" one another. But now and again a Boy Zorro comes around, where critique and intent rub each other the wrong way.

Favorable or not, taking into account a critic's observations--Rudy's expectation that illustrated children's books reflect a child's world by featuring diversity in gender and skin colors--won't diminish established intentions but certainly enhances the likelihood a future book will attract wider readership and more favorable critical responses.

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Can you accept imperfection? Can you accept that you'll need to revise again and again (and still again), that the word you're looking for may not appear until the twentieth or thirtieth draft?  Can you accept that one day your writing will flow like wine and the next day the well may run dry and all you can do is sit at your desk and stare for hours at an empty screen? Can you accept that

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§ Multiversity has been killin’ it lately with a bunch of industry analyses and convention reports. Here’s David Harper on Creator-Owned and the Thin Line Between “To Be Continued” and “The End” whch spins out of a comment Brandon Montclare made right here at The Beat.

What that commenter fails to realize, and what Montclare only scrapes the edges of, is that comics exist within a delicate ecosystem. A title’s fate – especially when it is outside of Marvel or DC – can be determined before a single issue is even released, and beyond that initial launch, it takes the actions of readers, retailers and creators in various channels and forms to keep those books alive in an increasingly diverse and competitive market. Those three groups don’t just impact the fate of a book, though. Each group impacts one another in some obvious and some not so obvious ways, and those three work together to create the special alchemy that makes the wheels of the comic book industry turn.

§ New Yorker cartoon editor Robert Mankoff remembers Charles Barsotti who passed away on Monday.

§ Cleaning up the tabs, a few days ago Beat alum Marc-Oliver Frisch took on comics criticism with a piece called What We Talk About When We Talk About Crit, which, in my sleep deprived state, was a hard slog for me:

It may well be true that people view criticism “as an extension of the artistic experience,” as Tom Spurgeon suggests. It’s probably fair to say, too, that “criticism” tends to be seen as being synonymous with “reviews,” and those, in turn, as a service rendered to the entertainment seeker—plot summary, some light background info, thumbs-up/thumbs-down recommendation, mission accomplished. Consequently, the worst and most obnoxious thing a critic could possibly do is be a spoilsport, either by being ambivalent, or by revealing plot points people would rather find out themselves, or by suggesting their taste is superior to the taste of their readers. It’s no wonder critics aren’t terribly popular when, at best, they’re supposed to be glorified food tasters, efficient catalysts for a maximized entertainment and/or artistic experience, ideally with no delusions of being anything more than, at best, useful leeches.

 § Sort of along the same lines, Dan Nadel interviewed Hillary Chute, an academic who is best known for her books of interviews with comics creators, Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics  this year’s Outside the Box: Interviews with Contemporary Cartoonists, and as the organizer of the famed G17 2012 cartoonists summit, Comics: Philosophy and Practice. Nadel stats off with some sharp questioning on whether Chute has been making a canon, and why she doesn’t include cartoonists such as Mat Brinkman, Ron Rege, CF and Ben Jones in her interview series, considering many of her actual subjects were interviewed or profiled in previous books about cartoonists. (For the record the cartoonists in her latest book are McCloud, Burns, Barry, Kominsky-Crumb, Clowes, Gloeckner, Sacco, Bechdel, Mouly, Tomine Spiegelman and Ware—a group certainly not encumbered by obscurity to be sure, but they are pretty much the best of the lot from the last 40 years or so, so they earned it.) Anyway, Chute replies:

I don’t think the Comics: Philosophy & Practice conference or Outside the Box ignores post-2000 developments in comics–almost every single person I cover in Outside the Box has published a really important recent work, like Charles Burns’s The Hive, Chris Ware’s Building Stories, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Lynda Barry’s collage activity books, and Phoebe Gloeckner’s in-progress reportage on Mexico.  So it doesn’t seem backwards looking at all: these people are doing fascinating and game-changing work right now.

Setting aside that the cartoonists Nadel is championing are ones he used to publish when he ran Picturebox—being passionate about the creators you publish is a good thing—this harkens back to a matter I’ve touched on here several times: the lack of cartoonists of acknowledged or potential canonical stature since, hm, let’s say Fun Home. Whether this is because they aren’t as good, they don’t have strong enough bodies of work (maybe because they don’t need to publish regularly as everyone listed above did at one point) or the “canon” is locked up tight, I’m not sure. Or maybe Frisch is right and writing criticism is such a hopeless task that we just let the chickens run free in the barnyard now. And you know, I’m not in favor of “canon” either. But I’d join in on what Chute suggests Nadel’s agenda is: if there is a canon, the Hernandez Brothers need to be in it.

Nadel linked to the current, comic-focused issue of Art- Forum, where more of this argument turns into a catnip toy for kittenish commentators. A few have been posted. One such is disreputable sources: art and comics by Fabrice Stroun, director of Kunsthalle Bern, who argues that since going mainstream, comics just aren’t as edgy and cool:

OVER THE YEARS, Artforum has published reviews of all types—laudatory or excoriating, lyrical or polemical—but only one has taken the form of a comic. That singular piece, authored by Art Spiegelman, appeared in the December 1990 issue of the magazine. Spiegelman’s task was to assess the controversial exhibition “High and Low: Modern Art and Popular Culture,” which had gone on view the preceding October at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and, while he was not nearly as incensed as some commentators by curators Kirk Varnedoe and Adam Gopnik’s mixture of MoMA masterpieces and pop-cultural detritus, he was by no means complimentary.

Given that this is Artforum, its natural that comics should be approached from the fine arts direction; I haven’t heard the notorious High and Low show referenced much in recent years, but it does hold a kind of Wertham-like stature in the history of comics acceptance, since it was a thorough beat down of the “low” part of the exhibit.

The other night I was chatting with someone in the academic world who told me that although comics are generally accepted in the pop culture sphere, in academia they are still fighting for their place. The cartoonists Chute covers can certainly all be used as rungs on the ladder to High Art; it will be a long time before a C.F. or a Nilson gets to join the club though. (BTW Chute does mention a bunch of younger cartoonists she likes in the piece; to see who click the link!)

§ New nerd-friendly Nikki Finke has a piece on the odd place of storyboard artists in Hollywood—they’re stuck in the Art Direction union when they probably shouldn’t be. I mention this becuase so many storyboard atists are quasi-cartoonists, or even cartoonsits, like Gabriel Hardman, whose storyboard for Inception is above.

“We board artists are basically stuck (after being forced to integrate) inside a union which has nothing to do with who we are. That’s the gist. Our concerns are not theirs. And secondly, we are not who people think we are. We’re like a white elephant in the room whom nobody wants to address. ‘Hellllloooooo?… is there anybody out there?’ [Pan right to the powers that be as they nervously look the other way.]

There is a new Guardians of the Galaxy trailer with portentous, choir-infused music, sad childhoods and every assurance that this will be just like every other Marvel movie, after all.

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Learning to accept criticism is a part of our job as writers—perhaps one of the hardest parts of the job—but few of us are comfortable hearing criticism of our work and often misinterpret it. Rather than accepting as a gift the heartfelt comments of a reader who may point out serious or not-so-serious problems in a narrative, we often bristle and choose to dismiss the comments as irrelevant

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As writers, we’re standing inside our stories, so it’s difficult to know how they look from the outside. As Kathy Lowinger says, ‘Get your work read because you can’t see yourself dance’. An outside perspective can be invaluable – and offers insights that you wouldn’t get otherwise.

So I suppose I have concluded the following:

1. A writer shouldn’t share their work until they’re ready for criticism and can take it or leave it without being mortally wounded. This is usually possible only after some time has elapsed after writing it.   
2. A writer should say ‘thanks’ for the feedback they receive, and nothing more. Then they can go home and decide what to do with it. If a writer tries to defend their work, the people giving feedback will quickly stop bothering. 
3. When giving criticism, try and restrict it to the one or two main issues – don’t go on and on. 
4. Try and give other writers the feedback that they are ready for. We can’t judge everyone by the same yardstick – and when I think back to what my writing was like when I first started, I cringe. By working to our strengths and strengthening the positives, the negatives often fall away all by themselves
5. But even when giving feedback to experienced writers, don’t forget the positives. We all like being reminded of what we do well. It makes us want to carry on.

What's your experience of writers' groups? Have I forgotten anything?

http://www.heatherdyer.co.uk

 

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The Critique
by Luisa Adams

Barbed wire
Words,
The artist's soul
dangles.

Opinion's hoarfrost
Icy,
The creative helix
tangles.

Devouring egos
Flay,
The tender skin
mangles.

Critic's cord
Encircles,
The artist's soul
strangles.

(When I was asked to participate in a segment on criticism (literary/film) for the CBS Sunday Morning Show, my friend Luisa Adams, author of Woven of Water, sent me this poem she had written after receiving a particularly negative critique.)

When does criticism cross the line between "the analysis and judgment of the merits an flats of a literary or artistic work" to "the expression of disapproval of someone or something based on received faults or mistakes"?

When creating something out of nothing, which is what a writer does daily, constructive criticism can help grow brighter a writer's light. Negative criticism and voicing objection to something, only with the purpose of showing what is wrong and generally suggesting disapproval is often interpreted as a personal attack and usually serves to dim a writer's light (especially if the comments touch off a sensitive backstory wound and trigger self-loathing and the inner critic's crippling and negative self-talk).

I find writers benefit from a critique that is balanced between what is working and what could be improved.
~~~~~~~~
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Choose the NOVEL TRACK or the PICTURE BOOK TRACK for 4, 10 and 16-week workshops to ensure you understand concept, plotting, character development, scene development, action and emotional arc development, as well has how to pitch your work to agents, editors, and readers. Live online video chat technology. I recommend writers of all genres and all ages take at least one picture book plot workshop. Narrows all plot concepts down to 28 pages and 500 words for clarity.

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For more: Read my Plot Whisperer and Blockbuster Plots books for writers.

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Eleven Eleven is looking for writing that pops!

We welcome daring and insightful submissions of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, art and literary criticism and drama. We are especially interested in fabulist, interstitial and/or experimental prose. We love translations and writing from outside the US. We also love recovery projects (archival work that draws attention to writers who may have fallen off the map – query us beforehand!).

Eleven Eleven is a biannual journal of literature and art published through the MFA Writing program at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. We produce an online issue in the winter and a print issue in the summer. The aim of our publication is to provide a forum for risk and experimentation and to serve as an exchange between writers and artists. Recent work first published in Eleven Eleven has been featured in the Pushcart Prize Anthology and Best European Fiction, and has appeared in books that later went on to win the Pulitzer Prize, the Governor General's Award and the PEN Faulkner Award.

We’ll be reading submissions for issue 17 from January 15 through March 1, or until we hit 200 submissions, whichever comes first.

Send your bestest work here.

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Tlaa: A Collective of Indigenous Expression

New Mexico State University's new online literary and art journal is accepting submissions focused on progressing Indigenous arts and scholarship, including, but not limited to fiction, creative non-fiction, scholarly criticism (MLA format), visual art, multimedia, poetry, and photographic expressions of your creative voice. We welcome all contributions that support Indigenous communities.

Submissions should be 12 point font, Times New Roman, in a PDF, or .doc file. Include 100 to 200 word author biography with submission. Send all submissions to:

tlaajournalATgmailDOTcom (Change AT to @ and DOT to .)


Deadline: December 1

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TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics is reading now for its monthly electronic issues in early 2014. Send a small batch of poems, a short essay on craft or pedagogy, a critical essay, a book review, or an interview. We will consider all writing of or about poetry.

Recent contributors include Hadara Bar-Nadav, Oliver de la Paz, Lauren Camp, Susan Johnson, Jesse Lee Kercheval, and many more. Online submissions only; no submission fee. To find out more and read recent issues, check out TAB at our website.

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A friend of mine has the beginning of a novel completed and asked me when it’s a good time to get feedback on his work. Would it be best to have friends read it mid-project to make sure he’s on the right track? Or should he wait to finish the draft?

There isn’t a simple answer to this question.

Sometimes getting feedback too early can completely derail the momentum of a project. Critical voices can get in the head of a writer, diluting the initial idea that drew them to the work. On the other hand it could be inspirational and help generate ideas. Feedback could get a writer through a road block on a project, or help him to focus an unwieldy story.

For me, writing a first draft requires boundaries. My first drafts are about figuring out what my subconscious has to say. I need room to explore, play, and not worry about craft yet. After I have a first draft, I begin to craft plot, tone, voice, etc., and figure out what the novel really wants to be. However, that is my process. I’ve met lots of writers who have a strong grip on their novel and what it is from word one. Some writers can be ready earlier to get feedback on tone, pacing, character, plot, etc.

So, how do you decide when it’s right to get feedback on your work?

Think about your current WIP and ask yourself:

1) How many “fresh eyes” do you have at your disposal? Eventually you will run out of readers who’ve never read an earlier draft of your book. You may want to hold off till you have a draft you feel is worth using up those “fresh eyes” on.

2) How many voices can you deal with in your head at once? Are you at a point in your work where you are ready to hear feedback? How will you react if that feedback challenges your choices? Do you think if someone said the beginning isn’t working that it would be helpful, or would it hinder your forward momentum? Be honest, are you stuck in the sticky-middle and looking for an excuse to start again?

3) Are you stuck and need some feedback to help you get back on track? Do you need others to help you brainstorm? Are you in a place where you’re open to suggestions and that dialog excites you? This can be the perfect reason to get some feedback early.

4) What are you looking for from feedback? Encouragement? A cheerleader? Constructive criticism? Brainstorming? Line editing? Let your readers know what you’re expectations are.

Also, if you’re only at the opening of your novel (like my friend), remember that once you get to the end of your book you will most likely re-write the beginning. So consider the fact that if you’re getting feedback on the opening of your novel – and you don’t have an ending yet – that feedback may be moot later.

Ultimately, this is up to you and how you incorporate feedback during your writing process. If you can use it and still hold on to the heart and integrity of your own work — then go for it. Just be honest with yourself and figure out why you feel like you want feedback right now. Is it a self-sabotage tool to distract you from the writing at hand, or do you genuinely think it’s time to receive feedback and incorporate it into the work? Only you know what will best help the development of your project.

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Every year at our congregation there's a holiday party between the two services, which offers kids the chance to make cards for sick kids, donate mittens to the mitten tree, roll up little goodies in crepe paper streamers that become Joy Balls intended for parents' stockings.  But you know what they head for first, don't you?  It's the graham cracker "gingerbread" house station, which gets its own whole room.

Both kids took quite a bit of time and effort over theirs this year (Duncan's being thatched with red licorice whips and then further shingled with brown M&Ms. There has been a lot of damaging weather this year and you just can't be too careful in a time of climate change), and on the way home in the car ("MOM!  Would you mind driving a little more carefully!") they commented on the less designed, less elegant approach of some fellow architects. 

"Most of them end up looking like sheds more than houses!"

***************************


all you did.
gumdropsskittlescandycanes--
your eyes say “Rush me to Insane.”

Heidi Mordhorst 2012
DRAFT


Postscript:  Duncan pronounces this "the best thing you've written in a long time.  It rhymes and it tells the ideas in a way I can comprehend!"  I guess my campaign in defense of sensitive free verse for children is not over.

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Call for submissions RGR. Fall 2012.

The RIO GRANDE REVIEW (RGR), the Department of Creative Writing at the University of Texas at El Paso’s literary magazine, invites all writers to submit works of fiction, non-fiction, criticism, comic, poetry and artwork for our 40th issue, which will come out this Fall 2012. We welcome any style or theme.

This edition of the magazine will also have a special section dedicated to works of visual literature and performance and criticism of these genres. Submissions must be in a format, either text or image, reproducible in a print journal. Each work submitted for this section may be used both for the RGR website and/or for the print version of the magazine. By submitting work to the Rio Grande Review the author gives authorization for the use of his work in both mediums.

The deadline for submission is October 31st 2012. Texts can be in English and/or Spanish. We are also accepting submissions in indigenous languages if they are translated into Spanish or English.

Please email your submissions to:

 rgreditors(at)gmail.com (replace (at) with @)

along with a short biographical note.

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[Amelia Montes is off today.]

by Rudy Ch. Garcia

As many of you 60s and 70s activists know, back in those days there were certain cosas that were not talked about in public places, things that La Raza had no tolerance for listening to. Criticism. Questioning of leadership. Talking about the jefes and jefas. It extended into the written word, as well. I remember a fairy tale I wrote that received physical threats as part of my audience review, on me, not on the tale. We seemed to be a gente allergic to the airing of laundry or anything that questioned the sanctity of our celebrities.

I don't know how much times have changed, but I found it refreshing to read a writer, new to me, detailing the type of discussion and views that those of us here at La Bloga have likely deliberately avoided presenting on our pages. Anyone involved in the Chicano lit world has heard unsavory to critical comments about some ChicanA writers. Yes, ChicanO, too. History and gente will decide whether our choices to not publicize or debate such was a journalistic weakness on our part. Likewise our tendency, sometimes, to find few weaknesses in literary works. I'll leave it at that.

Below is the beginning of a lengthy and journalistically responsible (in my opinion) article by Roberto Ontiveros. The title alone says much about its contents and the sometimes heated comments it produced:

Sandra Cisneros's defenders and detractors debate what the celebrated author has meant to San Antonio and Latino literature

[By Roberto Ontiveros, published Feb. 15, 2012 in the Current, "San Antonio’s free, award-winning, alternative newsweekly, featuring local writers and critics covering politics, arts, music, food & drink, and every other crucial Alamo City topic." – Website's "About Us"]

"As nearly everyone now knows, Sandra Cisneros — the oft-times indigenously attired author who founded the Macondo Writers' Workshop here in 1998 and the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation two years later — is done with San Antonio. Judging from the comments strung to the news articles announcing her impending exit, people here feel mournfully mosaic about her departure. She is done with Texas as well, and heading for... who knows where really?
.....
"As longtime friend and absolute fan Bill Sanchez told me, Cisneros's reasons for leaving are as simple as the fact that, at 57, she feels compelled to reevaluate her life and the work she still wants to accomplish. It is time to focus on herself, she tells me. So, Cisneros is done with this state and done with the state she found herself in. To be blunt, it sounds like she is done with a lot of you, too."

RudyG: One of the commenters wrote:
"Roberto [Ontiveros], what have you done? As Latinos we haven't the
luxury of destroying one another. The profound irresponsibility of ethics and knowledge in this piece is
 heartbreaking."

What the commenter termed Latinos not having the luxury of destroying one another, I call responsible journalism. The accusation of "irresponsibility of ethics" sounds to me like charges from the old Movimiento caudillismo some of us tolerated more than others.

I leave further interpretation of this article to La Bloga readers to decide for themselves. Go here to read the full article.

Es todo, hoy,
RudyG

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