Giving, receiving and understanding criticism

Replicated from my SheWrites blog, 14 February 2011.

I loved fantasy as a child. My favourite books were by Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl (regardless of my mum’s disapproval), and my early stories were all centred on magic kingdoms and special abilities, mysteries to be discovered and ‘perfect’ heroines. I was writing to define myself, to escape from the negative of reality and to create a fantasy into which I would fit.  Now I think back, there was always a strong feminine element in my early writing, always a female central character, child or adult, and she was always tough, clever and strong.

I loved reading and writing in primary school (prior to age 12) and none of my creative efforts were ever critiqued or questioned. I learnt myths and legends of every culture throughout history as part of my early schooling, and this helped me feel confident in remaining in the fantasy world, however contrived. It was in high school that I was faced with a harsh truth; my writing couldn’t only be about me in isolation of reality. In other words, my little fantasy world was to be slowly eroded as my writing came into contact with others. The urge to write and have others ‘get’ me through my writing was stronger than the urge to write for myself alone. I sought understanding and connection through my writing without even being aware.

So it was a rude shock when at age 13 I submitted what I thought was the first chapter of an epic fantasy that would evolve into well-loved volumes akin to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings collection, and was told by a young, intelligent, challenging English teacher: ‘Your writing is full of cliches and needs a lot of work.” What? How dare you! Oh the injustice! How dare she dismiss such greatness in one sentence! I was utterly shattered, which turned into disillusionment. I didn’t know how to take the criticism, probably because it was the first time anyone had ever been so up front with me about my writing, about the truth of it. I’d had no idea how naive I was and I wasn’t used to challenges. I was an all-rounder – I put in minimal effort and was rewarded with maximum results, so why try to improve? I was angry at first, then upset, then began to doubt myself.

I did very badly in English after that, just scraped past, until a shining light of an English teacher at age 16 gave me a moment of pure inspiration to produce something ‘real’ and the encouragement to keep it going…

Finding a voice

Replicated from my SheWrites blog, 31 January 2011.

I wrote stories all the time as a kid. They were usually fantasy, about girls with pretty names finding secret lands or unravelling hidden mysteries. I always felt as though my writing and reading habits were somewhat immature for my age, but I’d quietly plod along, churning out all sorts of stories (usually unfinished, however, but that’s another post…)

I recall my first year of high school at age 12 was incredibly difficult, as I’d gone from a very ‘alternative’ school into a Catholic girls’ school, and the transition was a struggle to say the least. I hated many of my classes, especially science, and I had few friends, finding it hard to relate to a group of girls who grew up in circumstances fairly removed from my own. I still had my stories, though, and was very excited at the prospect of those first English classes when we were asked to write a story as part of our assessment. This is my kind of thing, I thought! I excitedly wrote a story about my cat, hand-written, as word processing wasn’t the required norm back then, and because of the way I’d been taught to write I wrote in cursive script; it was messy, but I’d been taught that learning the form of the letters in their most beautiful way was more important, and that my writing would neaten up as I got older. Ms Kirkpatrick, a haggard, sour, ancient old biddy of an English teacher, who couldn’t even remember how to pronounce my name, reprimanded me harshly for that story. She was more concerned with the fact that I hadn’t ruled a margin, my writing didn’t adhere to the straight lines on the paper, and it was rather erratic. I don’t really remember what she said about the story itself but it completely shattered my confidence. I still wrote at home, and I faithfully kept the diary I’d begun at age 9 or 10, but it took until I was almost 17 to bring that faith in my writing back, thanks to a conversely wonderful English teacher who I will never forget. That too is for another post…

I found out today that I’ve been invited to write a review of a wonderful book by Kim Stagliano called ‘All I Can Handle’. I am so excited! I am yet to receive my copy, but it looks like an amazing book. It is about the author’s life bringing up three daughters with autism. I am excited not only because I find the topic most interesting, but also because I feel that this could signify my entry back into the literary world. I have been on the periphery for so long now, afraid to dip my toe in the pool of greatness, doing what the great Nelson Mandela once reminded us we do only too well: living small. My mum says this to me all the time, that I live beneath my potential, and although I know she is right I also dismiss her comments because she is my mum and everything she says is subjective.

In fact that leads me to another aspect of this discovery of a voice, a writing identity, and establishment of my place in the writing world. As she is a language teacher, I always gave my writing to my mum to read and was desperate for her feedback. It angered me that she would read my stories and then go on and on about how wonderful they were! She never gave me any constructive criticism, she would just gush about how well I wrote and what a fantastic story it was… oh, but she’d find at least half a dozen grammar and spelling or punctuation mistakes which she’d happily correct. But as for criticism of the structure, the tone, the characterisation, the syntax, no, those things were sacred; I was perfect and so was my writing. I knew this wasn’t right! But boy did I find it hard to deal with editorial interference years later… Is it still my writing if I’ve taken on board and implemented someone’s suggested changes? To what extent can someone influence my writing before it ceases to be mine? Little did I realise that no writing is mine; it was all there to begin with, I just discovered it.

The great history versus fiction debate

I’ve just finally read Kate Grenville’s The Secret River – I say ‘finally’ because it’s been sitting in my ‘to read’ pile for months now, and been on my list for much longer.  I can’t believe I left it so long!  It was such a great book, I devoured it in a week (which, for me, is a short amount of time to read even a small book).

It’s just the kind of writing I like and want to explore further, just fantastic.

Since finishing, I thought I’d look Kate up and see what background reading might be online about the book and her other work.  I came across her official site which has some great info on it about all her work.  It also contains some retorts from Kate on a couple of critical essays from historians.  I can’t believe they accused her of writing history when clearly the book is not intended as a work of history but more historical fiction.  One doesn’t have to glean this, it’s pretty clearly spelled out.

Anyway, rather than blab on about how unfair I think these historians have been to a clearly wonderful writer, I wanted to say that what I’d love to read about is the elements of the book that these historians consider fiction, rather than historical fact.  So of course we know the characters are fiction based on some historical characters, what we can’t be clear about is whether the sorts of environments, tools, weather, and general hardships experienced by the characters are true to history.  For example, did convicts’ wives really make the voyage with them?  And if so, were said convicts ‘assigned’ to their wives, as Thornhill was to Sal in The Secret River?  What about the places back in London that Grenville names – are they real?  Did convicts really get given their own bark hut as the Thornhill’s did?  And did it actually take a day to sail from Sydney to the Hawkesbury back in 1815?  These are the kinds of questions I’d love to hear historians answer.  I fully accept Kate has written a fiction based on historical events, so that’s all the more reason why I’d like to read essays from those ‘in the know’ (ie. colonial historians) discussing the truths and fictions of this book and more like it.

I read this book because I’m a) interested in good writing, b) interested in Australia, c) interested in historical fiction and d) interested in history; so I want to hear both the fictional and non-fictional account.  I think Kate has gone about things the right way, stating up from just what she wanted to achieve with the book and giving us a wonderful story with some historical elements woven in.  Where’s the criticism of books that try to pull the wool over our eyes – Gregory David Roberts’ Shantaram is a good example.  Is it because he didn’t write about long-ago history and more his own ‘story’ that no one bothered to criticise in the same way?  His was more of a work of fiction, only very loosely based on fact, yet he didn’t even bother to clarify his intent, instead just letting us naive readers be drawn into the story, only to find out (after some research) that it was all just a silly story…

Nice work Kate – can’t wait to read more!