Dissonance

What do you do when someone who you think has a clue says something about your work that doesn't fit?

You cannot dismiss it out of hand. You know that they are not a run-of-the-mill reader, and their impression counts for something. If you did not rate them at all, you could simply ignore what they said, and insist on your own view.

But what they said is so wrong. It is so at odds with what others have said. But others do not have their ability to understand writing, so you have to allow that to tip the scales. More importantly, you do not recognise it as a valid criticism, and you're objective enough to be able to.

My novel is flawed. It has problems with the narrative thread in the first half and it's too rushed in the second half. It should be somewhere between the two: a little stronger in the first half, toned down a bit in the second. If this reader had said that he struggled to keep reading because of lack of narrative drive, I could understand. He likes conventional structures, so the failure of focus might have annoyed him. The first half is episodic, and there is no strong thematic link between the episodes. Another criticism I have had is that the book as a whole lacks thematically (that wasn't how the critic put it but it's how I interpret what they said), with too many possible themes opened and not enough spun out into more substantial material. That seems a valid criticism.

(Reading this, you should understand that I mean this is a valid criticism if you set very high standards for your writing. I think most people would be absolutely delighted to have written something as good as I have. I can imagine some thinking, aha, he thinks he's so shit hot, yet he's written something awful. I haven't. It's not perfect, that's all, and I'm hard to convince of the value of aiming for less.)

But he said it was boring. Not boring for him; not dissatisfying for him personally. But boring. (I am leaving out of my consideration of this that he was absolutely fucking delighted that he found it boring, because it allowed him to think of me as fallible. I suppose I was surprised he felt that but I'm used to it: there are plenty of people who enjoy it when I fuck up; I set myself up for it, so I don't mind that they have a small moment of joy at my expense.)

But it's not boring. I doubt a single other person will ever say it is. I cannot reconcile that view with my own.

What do you do in that circumstance? Some people, faced with a dissonance of this sort, will get angry towards the reviewer. They do not know where to turn with that person, what they can say, how they can discuss the work or any other piece of writing with them. To resolve the dissonance, they change their view of the other person, to make it possible for the dissonant view, given their other ideas about the person. It's similar to the situation in which I found myself with K. We had a misunderstanding, which created a dissonance for her. She was in the wrong -- there is no question of that, we both know it -- but because of her circumstances at that time, she could not say so or back down. The only way she could feel good about how she had behaved was to create out of me a person who deserved it. (I was also in the wrong, but she escalated the conflict so rapidly that I couldn't do anything to express that. Which I do. I know I can be a twat when the devil is at the wheel, but I can also de-twat given the chance.)

Well, I won't be contorting my view of him so that I can think he's a fuckhead for not liking my book. I realise that most of the dissonance lies in my disappointment, not so much that there is someone who doesn't like my work (although we all feel that, regardless how little we rate the disliker) but that we cannot discuss it seriously, and cannot discuss other work either. This is how I am dealing with the dissonance: thinking out loud and making it make sense one way or the other, if I can. It beats yelling at someone that they are a cunt, even if it does mean accepting that you cannot entirely understand or resolve everything.

posted by Dr Zen @ 4:40 pm