Tooth and fang great for Halloween--not for writers

Thinking of baring your canines? It's that time of year, isn't it? Just don't sink your fangs into a fellow writer's work--not if you expect people to critique your writing fairly and constructively.

Tooth and fang reviewers. The bane of participating in writing workshops--face to face and online. It might just be my theory, but I think mean people behave worse, cloaked in the anonymity of cyberspace. There's something about a keyboard that brings out cool cattiness, especially in passive-aggressive types, who hide behind anonymous online identities and then slash and burn the work of others like they're leading some kind of cyber-Inquisition.

I was first introduced to this concept of "tooth and fang" critiques by Dorothea Brande in her book Becoming a Writer, who I've referred to several times on this blog in its short lifetime. It describes writers who pick out all the flaws in others' writing (because it's the work of others and not their own), and then "fall upon the work, tooth and fang," leaving the writer shaken and dazed in the process. There seems to be no end to the savagery writers will heap upon others in the name of "helping them improve."

I'm not enthusiastic about every piece of writing I'm asked or expected to read or review. Yes, it is easier to see flaws in others writing than it is one's own. But I try to at least make any criticism I give constructive.

I seem to attract tooth and fang reviewers like some people are bad boss magnets. I honestly think savage reviews say more about the brassy reviewer's mental faculties (or lack of them) than they do about the work being reviewed. In my first real face-to-face writing workshop, one of the workshoppers was cruel and idiosyncratic. I've have never encountered such a self-centered reviewer in my life. She read so much of her own life history into my book, using neither fair nor reasonable standards. The facilitators refused to rein her in, so I left the group. To this day, I shudder when I hear her name mentioned in other writing circles. Ooh, scary stuff.

On one online writing community I belonged to briefly (but not briefly enough), I posted five pages of a work in progress. You would have thought it was raw meat, and these fellow writers starving tigers. I have never been treated so badly by other writers in my life. I later realized this site was chock full of slobbering sycophants who regularly reveled in mob-shredding noobs--no policing of the site enforced. The shame of that whole experience was that my writing was good after all. Yes, it could have been improved--whose work is perfect? But not by listening to their bloodless ranting. I am ashamed to say that I pulled back from the work for two years I was so shaken by my experience on this site.

Here's what I learned from both bad experiences. Usually in any tooth and fang review, there's a bit of truth. And it's usually buried in a lot of hyperbolic drivel. It helps to remember that, as you're work is being shredded like cabbage into cole slaw, that somewhere something rings true. It's not easy to tell yourself to ignore most of the other crap and seek out the nugget of advice you can actually use, but it can be done. I compare the process to how the human digestive system works. You put a bunch of stuff into your body, it extracts the little bits it can use, but sends most of what's left to become waste material to be evacuated.

What can be done about the tooth and fang reviewers? I've given up finding a great writing workshop, which is one of the reasons I enrolled in a master's program. However, if you, like me, have found even a small network of people you trust in that program, like I did at Wilkes University, if you intend to keep writing, never let those people go. Hold onto them, nurture the relationships, because they are a precious commodity.

Next, learn to take more stock in your own writing. No one else can do that for you. Summon the wisdom and the ego strength to identify what is working about your writing and don't let anyone dissuade you from your convictions. If you don't have enough objectivity about your writing, then have the discipline to put it down for six months. Keep writing in the meantime. Then pick it up--but only after several months. See if you can't look at your work with objectivity at that point. If you're not sure your writing is working, then admit that you need more instruction, and go get it. Just don't sign up for this creative writing program, okay?