Embracing Indifference

“I would recommend the cultivation of extreme indifference to both praise and blame, because praise will lead you to vanity and blame will lead you to self-pity, and both are bad for writers.”
--John Berryman

I stole this quote from David Farland's Daily Kick in the Pants email today, but, as you can see, he stole it from John Berryman first. I Googled Berryman to see who he is. Be honest, before you read on. Do you know this guy? He was an American poet. And Chris, if you read this, he was from Oklahoma! But I pause to tell you the fate of this man. He was born in 1914 and died in 1972. How did he die? Of all things, suicide. Now I'm not here to say this man was a lousy hypocrite. I don't know squat about him--but you must admit it is ironic that he who advises indifference took his own life.

Both of my stories are in the hands of critics. Critics are good; as I've mentioned before, my work would be dribble otherwise. I've come across two funny mistakes this week:

1) In my first story I'd written "bazaar" instead of "bizarre." Ha! And nobody had caught it yet!!

2) In my second story I wrote "rode" instead of "road." Nathan Bransford just posted about homophones. I rolled my eyes--like I'll ever make that mistake.

3) I wrote a letter only to have my sistah point out I'd written succeeded instead of seceded. WOW, I swear I know the difference between these words.

So criticism is good. Of course some of our greatest changes are often much more than changes with silly little words. ALTHOUGH I do agree with Donald Maas when he says diction is often the biggest indicator of the strength of a writer.

But indifference to criticism. This can be a hard attitude to adopt. Especially when we dump the mac and cheese cheese packet in the boiling pot of water instead of the noodles cuz we're so hung up on the brilliance of our stories. Or we slap our cheeks, sprint across our house at 11 pm cuz we just need to progress with the pen but our minds are too asleep. (Anyone else fighting the urge to seek out ephedrine?)

One more thought about criticism, though I feel silly bringing up Nathan Bransford again, but I thought this to be great advice. He said if your editor says to change something and you get angry about it that probably means the editor is right. But if the editor says something, and you cock your head to the side and think "You know, I really don't think so," and stick out a pinky while drinking lemonade or tea, that probably means you have a point. Talk it over.

Indifference. It's a foreign concept but I will try my best to embrace it.