Using Criticism

I hate criticism. Always have. But one thing I've learned is that even when it isn't constructive, it can be useful. (Unless it's just spiteful, and then it needs to be thrown away like the garbage it is.)

I've never run across a spiteful agent. (And hopefully never will.) However, reading though my rejections, I do run across a snippet here and there that is sometimes a wee painful.

Painful or not, they can be used to improve.

Last month I had an agent tell me she couldn't get into my characters. That one wasn't too helpful. She'd only read the first three chapters, and the kinds of people my MCs are don't lend themselves to an easy friendship. I get that. I wrote them that way on purpose. You can't put your best foot forward when you've got to spend the first three chapters of your debut fighting to make yourself heard. Myke's great, but warm and fluffy she ain't. Still, if I had been writing a different story, the criticism would have been very useful. In fact, that criticism of Caldera has helped me to improve my characters in Blink and made me think more about how I'm writing the characters in AWJ. In Blink, I want Mary to be sympathetic from the get-go and grow into being tough. (I still don't have a handle on the characters in AWJ, but I know I want at least one of the main characters to come off as less-than-sympathetic.)

What really made this whole idea stand out though was a letter I received recently. An agent told me that my theory in Caldera was implausible. (I've decided thatplausible is a wonderful word, btw. It rolls around in your brain, and slinks off your tongue. But I digress.)

Anyway, it hit me like a ton of bricks tonight. He was right. And that was the point of part of the novel. It's part of the conflict. In the story, people think the theory is implausible, and that's part of the reason why the protagonist has such a tough time convincing people she's right. Criminitly! If it were easy, it wouldn't be a thriller for cripsakes. Gotta have that conflict, doncha know.

So I took that blinding flash of insight, and rewrote my blurb for the query letter. I'm still tweaking it, but I could almost kiss that agent. Too bad I sent out another few before I had this epiphany. I almost wish I could retract them all, but it's too late for that.

And it's too late for that one agent. Poor guy won't know what he missed until he sees my name on the bestseller list.

So, lesson learned here. You really can take life's little lemons and make lemonade. =oD

Get squeezing.