It's just so hard for me to look at my own past work with anything but critical eyes. Every other time I've had someone take a look at my work, they either liked it uncritically (which I distrusted because most of them were family members and would have liked anything I did), fobbed me off with a polite lie, or basically told me that I had no talent and to stop wasting their time with this untalented fifth-grade-level horseshit and die in a kitchen fire.
The one thing I have almost NEVER gotten is useful, constructive criticism, and I think that's severely stunted my growth as an artist and a writer. The closest thing I've gotten to constructive criticism in the past week is: "If you've been drawing for twenty years and your anatomy still looks like THAT, you're doing something horribly wrong." I could fix it if only somebody would fucking TELL me what to fix.
I have a similar problem, to be honest. Not just in my creative life, either. People have always told me to "grow up" but they never say what "grow up" means. Same with my creative efforts
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I'm not writing for the whole world; in the final analysis, I'm writing mainly for myself. But, as you point out, I am my own harshest critic -- if my best work isn't good enough in my own eyes, God knows what others might think.
I've been rereading the Esprit manuscript, and I realized that it takes me an entire prologue and half a chapter to finally find a good groove or a unique voice. Everything before it is so stilted and professorial and utterly Asperger-ish that it doesn't develop any momentum, but I don't know how to fix it -- I can't find a single word that I want to change, even though I know I should.
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The one thing I have almost NEVER gotten is useful, constructive criticism, and I think that's severely stunted my growth as an artist and a writer. The closest thing I've gotten to constructive criticism in the past week is: "If you've been drawing for twenty years and your anatomy still looks like THAT, you're doing something horribly wrong." I could fix it if only somebody would fucking TELL me what to fix.
Reply
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I've been rereading the Esprit manuscript, and I realized that it takes me an entire prologue and half a chapter to finally find a good groove or a unique voice. Everything before it is so stilted and professorial and utterly Asperger-ish that it doesn't develop any momentum, but I don't know how to fix it -- I can't find a single word that I want to change, even though I know I should.
Reply
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