Good Feedback And Bad

I keep hearing that you shouldn't let criticism affect you one way or the other. Bad criticism is just as valid--and just as worthless--as good criticism, and neither one should have an effect on your emotions.

There's an old saying: Hollywood is the only place where you can die of encouragement.

I let criticism affect me though. I respond really, really well to praise; not only do I perform better (I think) but it makes me a big fan of the praiser. Which doesn't make any sense--who knows if that person has any clue, any judgement, any taste? But I do anyhow.

And as Darin well knows, bad criticism sends me to bed with a cup of hot cocoa and my last will and testament. (Of course, while on this diet, it's a cup of hot water and my last words.) He always tells me, Don't take it personally, the person may be totally clueless. But I can't shake it off.

I'll start with the good first.

Len loved my Act I. He thinks I have to stick home the worst moment of Act I for my main character a little harder--he wouldn't be Len without saying something like that--but overall he really enjoys where this is going. I got lots of good feedback from the others in class. I'll forge on a bit today.

Len also spent some time in class convincing me that underneath it all, I'm a comedy writer. For some reason, I am really resisting this label; I don't know why. Mostly because I associate comedy with a lot of very unfunny stuff I've seen recently. I like the comic elements of something like Good Will Hunting or Scream with their laugh-out-loud lines--but those aren't comedies, are they?

Linda said, "You write wisecrack, smartass comedy." I guess there's a role for that in the world. I'll try to accept it. After all, I'm getting a reaction. That is why I became the class clown--albeit, the class clown with a 4.0 average--during high school: to get a reaction.

After Thesis class I headed over to Rewrite class. Almost everybody showed up for Rewrite class this week; the dining room we were in was packed (11 of us around an antique table). We decided that the next two weeks would be spent in private one-on-ones with Naomi, where she reads our scripts and gives us her feedback on them.

When we got to actually reading scripts, she picked up the script of the only Production student in the class, Marlo, and started asking her all these questions like, "Why this title?" and "How does it relate to the story?" Marlo answered all of these questions, which Naomi hadn't asked anyone else, and then Naomi opened the script.

"I'm sorry," she said, "I thought we were talking about the other script." My script.

We discussed Marlo's script--Marlo said some things that I just hadn't gotten from reading it, so maybe I've got to take a second look--and then got to mine.

Naomi clearly had read my script (this is the first one I wrote, the Irish script) closely. What we had done with everyone's script was read the first scene and last scene and then the author would tell the story of what happens in between. For my script, we read the first scene and last scene and then Naomi told the story of what happened in between. Jeez. Naomi also gave me so much feedback about it that no one else said anything--I'm not sure if they had read it or not.

Despite the vast quantity of problems she found with it--two notebook pages of one-line problem descriptions--she said she thought it was pretty close to done. I needed a couple of scenes that I had totally glossed over (or avoided altogether) and I needed to work out the backstories of the various characters more: why had they done what they'd done?

She kept talking about my script with me, in fact, through most of our break. Since she's done such a careful reading of my script, she wants me to schedule my one-on-one for early in the week. So far Naomi hasn't put that kind of energy into anyone else's script; I was kind of amazed. And, yes, flattered.

I myself had been thinking, Page One rewrite. A Page One rewrite is one in which you open a new file in your word processor and start typing the whole damn thing again, from page one, not using anything from the first one. She made me feel a lot better about it.

And now for the bad.

On Wednesday I was talking to Linda--I think we talk on the phone every day, which is amazing, because I've never talked so much on the phone, even when (or especially when) I was a teenager--and as usual we were talking about writing. I gave her feedback on her pages from last week and we got to talking about the other projects in class.

We often do talk about the other projects in class. It isn't nasty, it's a discussion of the other projects. I have to point out that it isn't nasty because some of my discussions with my classmates about others' projects has been nasty: "This person can't write their way out of a pay toilet," for instance. It's hard not to judge a writer on the basis of what he or she's written--it's human nature. If you find the writing juvenile, stupid, offensive, or whatever without a modicum of style, you assume that the writer is as well.

But everyone in our thesis class kicks ass. I mean that sincerely.

We discussed the state that our fellow thesis students are in and what we think of their projects. We agreed, for example, that the first one to sell is likely Erica's, the least likely to sell is Linda's, the funniest concept is Angie's, the most atmospheric one is Carolann's, the weirdest is Jim's, and mine...I don't know, the funniest? (I wish I could tell you what they were about, but they'd shoot me, and rightfully so.)

We talked some about one of the scripts, Carolann's, and discussed the problems with it and tried to come up with solutions. We were, in our own way, trying to play Len, trying to find some way of helping Carolann out of her jam.

I gave one suggestion, "What if she switched the identities of the detective and victim?" Linda said, "That's a great idea! You have to tell her that."

I thought about it and it did sound pretty good. It solved one of the problems at any rate. So I left Carolann a message and then sent her an e-mail about it.

Thursday morning I found myself thinking, Stupid! No one wants to hear that. Christ. Carolann was the first one to class after me, so I told her that I'd gotten so excited about this idea but it was probably pretty dopey after all. She said she was fine that I was getting so enthusiastic about it.

When class started, Carolann's was the first script we discussed. I don't think I said too much (or anything), but the general comments were that her main character, the detective, was too bland and needed work, needed something.

We finished with Carolann right before break--actually, no, Len said one line about how much he liked my pages, then we broke. Made for a nice counterpoint between his two sets of comments. Everybody (just girls today; Jim was sick) went up to the bathroom. By the time two of us were done, we discovered the other two hadn't arrived yet.

That's because Carolann was on the staircase, having burst in tears and gotten angry. She was talking to one classmate in the stairwell, and she asked the person I'd gone to the bathroom with to go to the bathroom with her. She sure didn't want to talk to me.

I got horribly morose for the rest of class. Even though I heard great things about my pages, I didn't enjoy the feedback much. Every time I said something during the rest of class, everyone else disagreed with me (not to be contrary, but because they had different opinions); I shut up after a while.

In the parking lot later Linda told me that Carolann was angry at everybody and she was being way too sensitive about this criticism--you don't get the luxury of being sensitive about criticism. There might be any reason for this, including personal reasons.

I still felt incredibly guilty--I'd written her that long note, basically rewriting her story. The guilt carried over through the first hour of the Rewrite class. I wondered if I should say anything to Carolann, or whether I had said enough. None of the stuff I said was intended to hurt her, it was all about her story and trying to come up with ways of improving it.

I know how this feels. Several times during first semester my old methods of preventing crying kicked in--only to let go in the parking lot later on. In the last big critique session I got, towards the end of the semester, Len basically told me to toss everything I'd written up until that point. It damn near killed me. I didn't write anything over the holidays as a result.

This is the down side of criticism, at least for me--you start thinking that everything you do is crap. If it's criticism from a particularly trusted source, you wonder where you went wrong and why you're bothering and why did you quit your day job and maybe going to live on a farm and raise chickens isn't quite as icky as it sounds. I hope Carolann isn't there. She does write well. She's having one problem.

I'm not going to say anything, however.

I don't care if the President was boinking an intern. I really don't. Guys who get into power tend to boink everyone in sight, and everyone wants to boink them--power does that, you know. (If you don't believe me, go read The Red Queen.) I'm sure there's been plenty of guys in power who have resisted, but it either took sheer force of will or incredible fear on their part.

I don't even think it matters at this point if the Pres was boinking her or not, because the right has him tried and convicted of obstruction of justice (telling her to lie) before anything's been investigated.

Everybody's been comparing this situation to Wag The Dog--we have problems in Iraq, we have problems in Israel...oh look, a sex scandal. I liked the comparison someone made (sadly, moi was not the first) that instead of this being a story with the President deflecting attention, it's Kenneth Starr deflecting attention. How did Kenneth Starr get involved in what is basically Paula Jones' case? There's a question. And what do we have to show for $25m.+ that's gone down the Whitewater investigation hole, by the way?

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Wednesday: 2.5 miles.

Thursday: 2.5 miles.

Probably no running today, but I might go for a walk. Unfortunately, I tend to stop during my walks--say, if I find myself at a news stand--so it's not really the same rigorous form of exercise. Of course, yesterday I hit every single red light along my route, so I'm not sure that that 2.5 miles was especially rigorous either.