This is a lazy way of doing it, but honestly more professional that what I’ve offered so far, and it deserves a post of its own in this series.
First, in the previously referenced Critique Guidelines by Amy Sterling Casil, this line recalls the reason we’re even discussing this:
“When we criticize work, we are commenting for the purposes of publishability, and our goal is to help authors to become publishable and published writers.”
Obviously if we’re writing for our own personal self-satisfaction and enjoyment, even as in this weblog for example, we don’t need more than our own opinion to publish. Type it up, press a button, and voila!
And this, from The Reading Experience, a literary weblog that I have just discovered and whose author, Daniel Green, has just posted an excellent comprehensive piece named The Poet-Critic that I would suggest you read in its entirety, but for now:
T.S. Eliot once wrote that in his view “Probably, indeed, the larger part of the labor of an author in composing his work is critical labor; the labor of sifting, combining, constructing, expunging, correcting, testing: this frightful toil is as much critical as creative. I maintain even that the criticism employed by a trained and skilled writer on his own work is the most vital, the highest kind of criticism; and. . .that some creative writers are superior to others solely because their critical faculty is superior.” (Eliot means not that such writers should be judged superior because they manifest this critical faculty, but that it is the possession of this faculty that has made them “superior” in the first place.)
Very often a writer feels he is most critical of his own work, and this is very commonly true. But unless the writer knows what he is looking for, and what the reader is looking for in a story as well, he can well depend on others to honestly offer feedback that can be helpful, useless, or sometimes, provide the vital spark that makes a story leave a reader whispering a quiet, “Wow.”
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
I disagree with the publishability issue. The comment by Casil would appear to limit the goal: if a story is published, does that mean it was the best story that could have been produced–what if the better story was unpublishable? Writing for publication is fine, critiquing for publication is fine, but how can a writer improve or prep for publication unless a number of other priorities have been practiced.
In this sense, shouldn’t criticism help writers write better stories, better stories being those that may indeed find their way into the Paris Review. This involves a better awareness of the story world and helping people to write the next story with that awareness in the fingers and in the head? The awareness of the elements of story and what makes for good entertainment in story has to be objectified, understood in the process of writing.
There could be multiple purposes in a critique–to search for cliches to break the writer from bad seeing. To gut a form to better serve a story that the form is strangling, for example. If the writer changes the story, understanding what she’s doing and why the changes are necessary, then the result may be something that charmes an editor; it may also be something that charmes the workshop.
Hope this makes sense.
I understand what you are saying, I think. Publishability does not ensure that a work is even at its best, much less better than another that has been judged by the same criteria and rejected. The criteria in the publishing world is subjective based on readership, genre, personal editorial opinion, etc. What I think that Casil means is that publishability should mean that a piece has all the merits of a great story, including the elements of fiction. Doesn’t always mean that, I realize. But I believe the intent is not limiting the goal–unless tailoring a story to public taste or individual media–but to raise it to the highest standards possible.
Your own statements still lead back to publication as a standard, and I think what we are trying to say is that whether or not an author has publishability as an ultimate goal, and whether or not the publishing world even has a standard that is higher than our own, the goal is simply to work the story until it is at its best– to charm even just one reader, or to give the author alone a sense of pride. There is no reason for a writer to rebel against a capitalistic publishing world if both are looking for the same thing.
But then again, if one uses a different example: If a person is “good” with the goal in mind to go to heaven, “good” meaning following standards of let’s say the 10 Commandments just as a basis. Will another person who, with no belief in any form of a God or afterlife, follows those standards of “good” just for their own sake, not be at the same level of achievement regardless of whether there is a God or not? (And no, I am not likening the publishing industry to any, even the least of the gods.)
I think your last example is exactly the point. Publication may be a fringe benefit of the process, providing a place where stories end up, whether a story was meant to be there ir not.
You make good points. The standards may be as they were in the past, since some writers still go to the classic stories as good examples and influences–strong characters, interesting situations and twists, satisfying narratives. I think one of the best teachers is the story itself. It’s good that there are good stories. They give us something to measure by. Hugh knows this, too. We have to acknowledge the masters.