I belong to an online writing community. To earn points, I write critiques for other writers. Enough points grant me the opportunity to post my own work for others to critique. I joined it five years ago, and I can’t forget my first one ever—not one that I wrote, but one I received. It was the most vicious criticism I’d ever read about my work. I won’t mention the person’s name, not because I don’t want to expose the person, but because I forgot it. I wouldn’t have exposed the name anyway if I remembered it because I’m not that type of person.
Anyway, I remember him writing that I shouldn’t use metaphors because I wasn’t that good yet. He tore every sentence of prose that I wrote, meaning not one sentence passed his test. It was a true story with names changed to protect real people, about my time as an intern in Hollywood. I lost sleep over the critique. It was that hostile. I thought I could never write another story again.
I could write a message to those who critiqued me on the website, any message, as long as it wasn’t hateful. So I simply wrote, Thank you. And he simply wrote back, You’re welcome. That was the end of our exchange and our parting words as well.
Just out of curiosity, I read his story. We could post chapters of our manuscripts on the website. I must say, he was a pretty good writer, so I couldn’t write him back saying, Your writing sucks, too. That would’ve been untrue.
His criticism of my work was so vicious that after I posted more work, I wouldn’t read the critiques. I just stuffed them in a bottle and watched them float down the river. This went on for three years. I would post a short story for others to review and receive emails when people critiqued the work. The emails would tell me how many words the critiques were. In a nutshell, the fewer words, the better. If someone had written something like a two-hundred-word critique, that was a good sign. But if someone had written a thousand-word critique, that was not a good sign. Some stories did receive over a thousand words. And my heart would start pounding. I wouldn’t read them.
I finally brought this problem up to my therapist. We practiced EMDR to desensitize the blows of criticism. Let’s be frank. There are bigger worries in the world than critiques of my work. But to me, it was significant. EMDR (or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a technique used by therapists in which you follow a round light left to right and right to left with your eyes while you relive the painful memory. You’re supposed to report the physical sensations in your body to the therapist after each round. When remembering the critiques, I would feel the pressure in my chest and throat. After several rounds and several sessions, the bite of the critique wasn’t as vicious.
My therapist and I decided to read the next critique in our session. I read it out loud, and we examined the meaning behind the words. Over time, the critiques weren’t as bad as before. I could handle the criticisms better. They didn’t feel as personal.
We continued EMDR through each critique until I could read them on my own and didn’t need her help. This took about half a year to resolve. Now I can read critiques like they’re nothing. As I’d said, there are much worse worries in the world than a critique of my literary work. But I’m so self-absorbed that I can see why they would bother me so much.
I now welcome the critiques. They help me more than they hurt me, I guess because my writing has grown. It’s an ingenious website. I won’t bring up its name just like I won’t bring up the name of that vicious first critic. I hope he’s doing well. Wink wink.
