by Gaius Coffey

A consistent theme in writing books and blogs is the advice to seek out honest feedback. It’s a pretty straightforward argument — if you’d thought there was a problem in your prose, you’d have fixed it, right? So, any remaining problems are problems you cannot see. You cannot fix problems you cannot see, so you recruit somebody who can. A trusted reader.

It’s difficult to imagine any credible objection to that position and the majority of writers pay lip-service to the importance of seeking out good critique.

But what do writers do with that feedback?

When experienced writers talk about critique on forums, they repeatedly assert that it is up to each individual to choose how to respond. After all, some critiques say more about the person making the comment than the work they are talking about. Some advice is not in line with what the writer intends. And, yes, some advice is just wrong. To incorporate every single piece of advice and respond to every criticism is to edge toward madness.

And I have no difficulty with that position either.

But there’s a conflict somewhere in here. The feedback that is most likely to be discarded is the feedback the writer finds hardest to accept. The hardest feedback to accept is likely to be an issue the writer can’t see. And that strikes at the whole purpose of feedback; to highlight issues that the writer can’t see.

It is common for writers to follow a statement about the importance of critique with a caveat about types of critique they ignore. This can take a number of forms;

• “…doesn’t [read my genre / get my work / like my style]…”
• “…not really my target audience…”
• “…they can’t see I was using [technique] deliberately to [something else they missed].”
• “…I switch off when they start quoting [rule]. A good writer knows when to break the rules…”

Insidious statements like these undermine critique even before it is given. They are attractive because there is often a grain of truth in them, but they betray a prejudice on the part of the writer about who is “qualified” to comment on their work. That prejudice makes it too easy to discard opinions without thought.

To benefit from feedback, writers must be open to hearing, and considering, honest opinions about their work. That means respecting readers and accepting that their reactions are valid whether or not they “got” what you were trying to do. But if I am advocating listening to everyone who comments on your work, how do you avoid the spiralling madness of a critique junkie struggling to satisfy conflicting and confusing comments from multiple sources?

To paraphrase Neil Gaiman (point 5, here): Listen to all your readers to find out where the problems are, but use your own judgement to determine if they are valid and how to resolve them if they are.

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Gaius Coffey’s story “Alone, Not Lonely” was shortlisted for the 2010 Fish Publications One-page Story competition. His story “Terry and the Eye” was Every Day Fiction’s most read story in March, 2010. He lives in Dublin with his wife, two cats and a baby daughter; the latter being as much an inspiration to write as an impediment to writing resulting, on balance, in bafflement.

Any writer who has ever critiqued another writer’s work will be familiar with that awful sensation when a well-intentioned critique causes offence and results in bad-blood. Such exchanges are inevitable whenever honest opinion is sought or given, especially where the opinion surprises the recipient. However, if you accept the premise that the purpose of critique is to develop a writer’s skills, it is precisely those surprises that are potentially the most valuable.

I was genuinely stunned by the negative reaction of female readers to one of my male characters; I meant to show a man nervously preparing for a big meeting whereas the majority of female readers saw a distant father ignoring his children. Without that feedback, I would have finished my novel draft unaware that it alienated a substantial portion of my potential readership. Instead, I learned about readers’ different perspectives and the importance of detail. That’s in addition to the side benefit of rewriting a main character and plotline more carefully.

Despite the value of those surprises, it is tough to create a safe environment for both the writer and the reviewer – both are taking a risk in presenting their ideas. This is why so many established critique groups have a firmly ingrained etiquette. For example, in the group I host at http://www.writewords.org.uk almost every critique includes some variation on the statement: “This is just my opinion, take what you find useful and ignore the rest.”

Etiquette, however, is only part of the solution. Someone who is either unsure of their ability or who is writing purely for the pleasure of using words is unlikely to thank you for a robust critique aimed at pushing a piece to publication quality. Equally, someone who is confident of his skills and actively seeking publication is unlikely to value a critique that says simply “I enjoyed this” (though it is nice to know when you get things right, too). Fortunately, responsibility for this is in the hands of the writer when he chooses to participate in a given group.

With good etiquette in place and all parties matched for level and ambition, the next problem is critique philosophy. Before I continue, I should lay my cards on the table; I am serious about publication and serious about improving. My group is called “Intensive Critique” and its clearly-stated mission is to provide honest, considered and detailed critique. It attracts good writers who are also serious about publication. My critique philosophy is in line with that and, as such, I would like to challenge some myths about what is and is not good critique.

Myth 1: Good critique is always encouraging

A writer should not be put off when a few paragraphs don’t work for a reader. It is more valuable to state clearly, with reasons and examples, when something doesn’t work than to bolster the ego of a writer who is already confident of their skills.

Myth 2: You cannot critique in a genre you don’t read

Critique is about looking at a piece with fresh eyes, to see the things writers haven’t, can’t or don’t want to see for themselves. Genre rules can be like the emperor’s clothes; readers assume that’s how it should be and read it that way.

Much the same as reading your paragraphs backwards when proof-reading for typos, reading outside your genre not only broadens your skills as a writer, but allows you to see things as a reviewer that you might otherwise have missed.

Myth 3: Critique must be sensitive to the writer’s intentions

A reviewer cannot know the writer’s intentions.

Some writers—I’m one of them—go out of our way to obscure our intentions. Others adjust how they describe their intentions to suit their audience. Still others write a piece because it felt right and are unaware of their unconscious intentions.

In my opinion, the only way to critique is to read and react to the work as you find it.

Myth 4: Critique must be correct to be useful
As with the example of the misunderstood man above—where readers understood the exact opposite of what I meant—it is invaluable for a writer to find when readers have not understood what the writer intended. The reviewer cannot say when that has happened because they are unaware of it. But these misunderstandings are visible to the writer reading the critique and they should direct the writer to problem areas that need work.

But if all those myths are discounted, what is left to separate robust critique from a vindictive attack? In my opinion, the only thing that can be expected of any critique is that it is honest and that the reviewer’s intent is to be constructive.

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Gaius Coffey’s story “Alone, Not Lonely” was shortlisted for the 2010 Fish Publications One-page Story competition. His story “Terry and the Eye” was Every Day Fiction’s most read story in March, 2010. He lives in Dublin with his wife, two cats and a baby daughter; the latter being as much an inspiration to write as an impediment to writing resulting, on balance, in bafflement.

When the machines are stilled and the afternoon air tastes of salt, you can slice through the silence and swim deep, into the deeper silence of the sea, provided you have the necessary books!

You will need two books that feel as soft as well worn coins, with the story bobbing up in between. You will need to squat on your haunches and forget where you were; soon your mind will paddle forth into an experience that is like sea water in your mouth; your hair redolent of ocean…

I thought I had begun to tire of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, old master writer that he is. I had read too much of him and could not shake the feeling off between one book and the next.

 He writes too much and always of love I felt. There was only so much I could consume of the rich platters of sensuous prose, mostly revolving around sensual lives. Nobel Laureate that Marquez is, he has mostly if not only, written about love, the physical aspects of love. But this was before I drifted into a Landmark Bookstore, because that is the only place in a Mall I can tolerate being for longer than an hour. This was before I nibbled on the back covers and random pages of books that I would not buy at that store and chanced upon a slim volume, “GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ – The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor.

One hundred and six pages long. As much a novella as another Nobel laureate – Earnest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. Both books had a sailing man pitted against the sea, a tough protagonist. Both had fish in it, big fish. Both had despair and hope; both had the men fighting with the last of their strength. Both ended on the shore. Both were written in tight journalistic prose. And both were such differently eclectic reading experiences!

In The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor, Marquez moves away from his usual lush and luscious prose; he adopts a more a clipped journalistic style, as if he wanted to cut away everything but the sailor’s most stark experience of the sea. The story line is straight forward, like the writing. In this story Marquez takes the true life experience of a shipwrecked sailor and makes it his own.

 A sailor, Velasco, falls into the ocean during a bad storm. He does not realise that he has fallen until he tries to surface and finds nothing but ocean all around him and then in the distance he sees the destroyer plunge into an abyss. The cargo from the destroyer float up and Velasco tries to keep himself afloat by grabbing one after the other. Bobbing in the ocean he sees the two rafts that have also fallen over board or been thrown overboard. He sees three of his colleagues struggling in the ocean; none of them can board either of the rafts. Velasco finally hauls himself into one of the rafts and thus manages to save himself. The ship is no longer visible.  The waves are choppy and despite his best efforts he cannot save his friends. Velasco finds himself  completely alone in the raft; alone with his possessions – his watch which keeps perfect time, a gold ring on his finger, a chain with a medallion of the Virgin of Carmen, his keys to his locker in the destroyer, three business cards that a shop had given him in Mobile (the place from where he got his destroyer assignment) and the clothes on his back and shoes. Thus begins Velasco’s ten day adventure in the Caribbean Sea, during which time he almost starves to death, tries to catch fish, is encircled by sharks, tries to catch and eat an albatross and does all he can not to let his body die. His ordeal ends when he is finally washed ashore in a coastal village in Colombia, rescued and becomes a celebrity.   The story moves like an epic, the lone warrior’s battle with the ocean shimmering against a great wall of sea water. Marquez is at his poetic best in this sparsely worded yet loaded with imagery novella.

The same is exactly true about Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. Except that we expect Hemingway to write sparse journalistic prose. Except that in this less than hundred pages long, almost like a long story, novella Hemingway scaled poetic heights never reached before by him.  Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, The Old Man and the Sea tells the epic ordeal of Santiago and his battle with an unusually large Marlin, the little boy who does not lose faith in him, the unrelenting sea, sharks and of course the Marlin that puts up a fight like a true warrior.  From the very first line of this story – ” He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.” – right up to the concluding sentences - ” Up the road, in his shack, the old man was sleeping again. He was still sleeping on his face and the boy was sitting by him watching him. The old man was dreaming about the lions.” – Hemingway’s prose keeps his readers’ hearts taut, and when you finally emerge from it, it takes you a few minutes to get a bearing of your physical surroundings.

When I first read The Old Man and the Sea, I was convinced that should I ever live a castaway’s life (and in those days I mostly dreamed of living like Robinson Crusoe) I would cast myself away with a few chosen books and Hemingway’s book would be the first in my satchel bound library, to be read and read for the rest of my castaway life! Now of course I know that Marquez’s book Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor is an equal contender!

Previously published at Rumjhum Biswas’ blog,  Writers & Writerisms

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Rumjhum Biswas lives at the edge of the sun toasted city of Chennai, in a corner where migratory birds cruise the sky above the din of a burgeoning IT hub and an ancient temple dips its toes into a not so ancient mini lake. Her writing life will hibernate while she gets used to this new life.

Short story writer and children’s author, Nik Perring, offers up a collection of short short stories in a charmingly small, but deceptively powerful package (Roast Publishing rocked this book!). The simple, effective line drawings as well as the subtle tone-on-tone cover art suit the whimsy and veracity of the writing inside.  Not So Perfect contains 22 short stories about human frailty and hope, exploring those moments of realization when we discover none of us are perfect, yet somehow we manage to continue on.

The tone is set for the reader by the cover art, simple, straight to the point, yet somber too, quiet.  Just as his writing is. When Perring deals with broken hearts, the voice is even and clear, allowing the reader to absorb the poignant significance of his words. 

Whether it’s the aftermath of betrayal, the loss of innocence, the strength of love, or the presence of hope, the themes woven through this little book matter.   What Perring is most interested in are the relationships between couples, married or not, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, neighbors, and with occasional strangers.  Those moments of interacting and reacting with others and the results of that contact are what load this collection with force.

My three favorite stories, “Kiss,” “My Wife Threw Up a Lemur,” and “My Heart’s in a Box” prove his facility with the genre.  All three exemplify Perring’s talent with subject matter, structure, and language.  All three fall into the category of magical realism which Perring handles with command.   All three are about marriage.

 The first, “Kiss,” is about an attractive young wife married to a much older man.  The first few words of the story sum up their relationship with the kind of brevity typical of Perring: “The man was rude to his wife, mostly.  But she loved him all the same…” 

While the expectation might be with this opening to feel sympathy for the wife because of her husband’s temperament, the ending changes our basic assumption. Although the old man’s tribute to his wife is unexpected, it feels perfectly in tune with what we know about these characters.  The story and its people are moving in their quiet simple way. 

“My Wife Threw up A Lemur” is filled with a reality stretched to the point of credibility, but in a way that makes us willing to read on to see where lead.  It is also full of hope, the hope of acceptance by others for who we are.  The title of the book comes from this story.  ”My Heart’s in a Box” is not particularly hopeful, but it too is magic in its revelations about love given and–misplaced.

This is how Nik Perring works.  He surprises, but never with cheap surprise. He plays with magic, but affirms truth. He is wise.

Romance finds its place in several of the stories, love affairs that work and those that don’t.  “The Mechanical Woman” illustrates hope in the pursuit of love as does “Lump” while “Broken Pieces of Us” and “Say My Name” show us the difficulties of dealing with lost love.  “In My Head, I’m Venus” takes another view of romance: fear of love.

Another theme in this collection has to do with childhood.  The loss of innocence and the vulnerability of parents are explored in “Bare and Naked in Siberia,” “Shark Boy,” and “The Other Mr. Pannosian.”  And of course these have as part of their arsenal of persuasion, hope, magic, and stark reality.

Every story in Nik Perring’s collection resonates with perception, authenticity, and voice. Even the couple that verge on the sentimental, “Angel in the Carpark,” for example,  leave a delicious after taste.

About Nik Perring:

Nik Perring lives in Cheshire where he writes, mostly, short stories.  He likes fountain pens, the autumn and writing down the things he makes up. His short stories have been published widely, online, and in print in the UK and abroad, and include 3:AM, Smokelong Quarterly, Word Riot, and Metazen, among other. Nik’s also the author of the children’s book, I Met a Roman Last Night, What Did You Do?  His website can be found at http://www.nperring.com/.

 Nik Perring’s debut collection of short, short stories, Not So Perfect,  published by Roast Books is currently available through Gardners or direct through Faye Dayan at Roast Books.  Email: faye.dayan@roastbooks.co.uk.

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Gay Degani has published in journals and anthologies including two The Best of Every Day Fiction editions and her own collection, Pomegranate Stories.  Her stories online can be read at Smokelong Quarterly, The Battered Suitcase, Night Train, 10 Flash, Short Story America, Emprise Review, as well as other publications. Nominated for a Pushcart, she edits EDF’s Flash Fiction Chronicles and blogs at Words in Place.

These days, Kuzhali Manickavel blogs, and the Rhinoceros beetle has crept out of the shot glass on her desk. Which is a good thing in a way – not the rhino beetle, the blog - because we get slices of her sharp incisive humor more often. On the other hand,  I am getting rather impatient waiting for her next book or flash fiction collection to hit the stands!

Like her publisher, Blaft Publications, I discovered Kuzhali’s writing floating effortlessly in the deep and expansive ocean of the WWW. I was hooked from the very first story I read.  In fact,  a bunch of writer friends and I got busy emailing each other links to her stories, and wondering  all the time we were at it, where exactly that Temple Town in South India was and who exactly was this writer who lived with a rhinoceros beetle in a shot glass! It was not just her stories, even her bio intrigued!

I finally met her at the launch of her book – “Insects Are Just Like You And Me Except Some Of Them Have Wings” here in Chennai a couple of years ago. I found a very amicable person, on the reserved side but with such generous dollops of that by-now-familiar deadpan humor that her innate reserve was barely visible.   

  As for her stories, they may be presented with dead pan humor, but they are much too layered to be read and laughed off just like that. Even the shortest ones, like “Do You Know How To Twist With Girls Like This?” which is less than a page long is drizzled with images that tend to stick to you like Voodoo pins. To give a couple of examples: ’our eyes click and hum inside our head,’ ‘cloud of halitosis’. “The Unviolence Of Strangers” is another less than a page long piece  which has images like ‘dying like a freshly pinned dragonfly,’ and breasts that have ‘collected in sagging puddles of discontent. Afterwards, when the story ends you realize what the ‘pavement piece’ in the narrative really was.

Each of the thirty five stories in the book sparkles with metaphors; the stories simmer in your head long after you have read them. Some stories like “Suicide Letters Are The Most Common Form of Letter” (one of my favorites in this collection) convey a whole range and depth of emotions in tightly packed prose; the humorous tone is misleading, because we are treading on sad soil here. But Kuzhali’s dexterity is such that the sadness hits you only when you are done with the reading. Her stories are fast paced, at times almost breathless; this could be one of the reasons why their full impact is felt after the reading is done – pretty much what good stories ought to do!

The unique experience of Kuzhali’s writing is the collective effect of her pace, her seemingly fractured imagery and her often tongue in cheek references to serious things; all three elements blend together to give you an unshakable reading experience. ”Insects Are Just Like You And Me Except Some Of Them Have Wings” is a slim book that you can slip into your bag and carry while travelling. The stories buzzing with humor make for easy reading in trains and airports. After that the stories continue to journey with you long after you’ve shut the book.

Adapted from an earlier post in Writers & Writerisms 

Rumjhum Biswas lives and writes in Chennai.

Rose Metal Press has published a new book called Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction, Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field, edited by Tara L. Masih.  This short (of course!) 157 page-handbook gives beginning writers of flash fiction a place to start and continuing flashers a much-needed resource. 

In their introduction, publishers Abigail Beckel and Kathleen Rooney discuss flash (0-1500 word range) as fiction that blends “genres and forms.”    However, in presenting the conventions of flash fiction, they wanted a book that would not “pin said inventive forms down with strict definitions.”   What they offer instead is “a book of ideas about and for flash fiction.” 

Editor Tara L. Masih has pulled together many of those ideas in twenty-five essays by writers such writers as Ron Carlson, Rusty Barnes, Kim Chinquee, Steve Almond, Vanessa Gebbie, Robert Olen Butler, Stuart Dybek, and Randall Brown.  The essays are divided into useful categories including “Freedom and Feeling in the Form,” “Beginnings and Endings,” and “Focusing and Editing,” making the book a user-friendly field guide to Flash Fiction, to be read either as it has been put together or searched through for specific help or inspiration.

“In Pursuit of the Short Short Story,”  the editor’s introduction, Ms. Masih opens with the following quotation, “Each drop encases its own separate note, the way each drop engulfs its own blue pearl of light,” from Stuart Dybek’s story “Nighthawks.”  Although this description in its original context is meant to define rain, Ms. Masih believes it is “as close to a definition of flash fiction” as she can give us.  The editor of the “Field Guide” then unfolds a history of the short short story beginning with Washington Irving and Poe to its present incarnation on the internet and in print journals dedicated to short short fiction. 

As for the essays, they offer insights into the art and craft of flash as well process.  Vanessa Gebbie writes about kidnapping the reader and using prompts in her piece called “Fireworks and Burnt Toast.”   Shouhua Qi discusses the origin of flash in China where short shorts are called Minute Stories, Pocket-Size Stories, and more familiar to the online flash reader, Smoke-Long stories.  In Robert Olen Butler’s “A Short Short Theory,” the author expands James Joyce’s one ephiphany at the end of a story to include a similar epiphany early on in the piece, “when the yearning of the character shines forth.”  Many of the essays feature flash fiction pieces written by their authors.

A useful, intelligent addition to the discussion of flash fiction, Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction manages to give readers what they want to know about flash fiction without limiting the genre with “strict definitions.”

The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction:
Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field.
Edited by Tara L. Masih
ISBN: 978-0-9789848-6-1
$15.95

 Order directly from Rose Metal Press