Some of the wisest advice I was ever given, and I do not know who exactly gave it to me or when, is “You cannot be friends with everyone in life.” This is absolutely invaluable and can only be so very thankful I received it in my early twenties as opposed to late in life. It is because of this that I have lived a life of honesty and being true to myself.
Now, with that said, enemies are made at many different turns. Some just happen because you may just LOOK like someone the other person didn’t like in their past. Some happen by accident through some bit of poor judgement on your part that sticks for the duration of life. Some are by the mere fact that you are already behind the 8-ball contending against a lifetime of stereotypes and misguided lessons passed on by the people in another person’s life. But some enemies are made because of the honesty that I wrote about a few sentences up is not appreciated by the person receiving it.
Today, I very well may make an enemy with someone I have no intention of making an enemy with. But here is the rub of it. If you are throwing out a product open for public critique, you need to rise above the personal sting of the critique and empirically process it without equating that to a personal attack. In layman’s terms, get over yourself and ask if what I am spitting has some weight to it.
I am not sure how I even navigated to the blog of a co worker, Stacy Halbach (her married name escapes me), but I stumbled upon her musings, much like the ones I do here. I read about 12 entries on how she is pedaling to publishers her manuscript of a book she wrote and her receiving rejections. One of her posts involved a comparison to life with speed bumps and how to approach both in terms of speed; slow, medium or get some air Mach 3. She told of a situation between her and another woman at the gas pump which she inadvertently made an enemy of.
Her three choices were: ignore her (go slow), acquiesce and apologize (medium) or fight (Mach 3). She felt she took the middle road and she acquiesced and apologized.
Now immediately, you see the problem. Her VIEW of what the middle road is was not even close to what a middle road is. Ignoring her should not have been even a choice as that is not going forth with speed, it is coming to a stop and avoiding the speed bump entirely. Yeah yeah, I know, ignoring her IS actually a choice, but it is a real lame one. Her assessment of choices was wrong to begin with.
But none of the details of this situation is the point of my entry today. The point is, I have no idea how she will receive my critique. I told her that her solution was boring, and it WAS boring. She talked about her zen approach to this potential conflict. Rarely does zen make for a good story and knowing that makes all the difference in storytelling ability.
I have always been a good storyteller. A large part of me LOVES and THRIVES on conflict. Call it being Greek, blame it on me being from Jersey, attribute it to Short Man’s Syndrome, whatever the fuck it is, I have a HELL of a lot of good stories, and many times they involve conflict. This gas station powderkeg could have exploded into a plethora of stories, but it fizzled into a very unremarkable display of nothingness. I suggested next time, fight like your life depended upon it.
I do like to critique and I think this has made enemies in my lifepath. I remember I critiqued a screenplay from a coworker of mine. I pored over the thing THREE TIMES and made three separate sets of notes. I think the notes were longer than the screenplay. Our relationship was never the same after that. I made an enemy by being honest.
I want to be honest with Stacy. I love her to death. She throws AWESOME parties which I still want to get invited to. But I really want her to improve her writing. And I wonder if she gets an honest critique of it. I once took a writing class and the most important info I gleaned from the $620 pricetag of the class was to NEVER give the piece of writing you want critiqued to someone you know because you will never get an honest criticism. I think it is because of that very notion that I am honest and is usually the proverbial deal breaker in my relationships.
I have to ask Stacy, does she REALLY love to write? I actually do. I have been keeping a daily journal for now something like 17 years. I look forward to writing in it and it takes precedence over most everything. It’s a passion. I have been writing poetry since I was seven. I lived on word searches, cryptoquotes, Scrabble and Boogle as a child. I would win contests of who could make the most words out of a single word. Graffiti had its place at one time in my life. But the irony is, I hate reading an that includes my own swill. Even these blogs I pore over so that every word is spelled correctly, punctuation in its proper places. I see misspellings on her page and can only wonder if these are in her own manuscripts. Poor grammar and misspellings are those speed bumps when it comes to reading. You want the road to be smooth, and the reader to not bounce around no matter how small those bumps may be.
Anyway, I inadvertently accidentally may have turned other people onto my blog because I had to give my blog address as a verification for posting a comment. And lo and behold, it now has a link to here. I was happy with 5 fans, but I may be getting more traffic than I wished to at this point.
But I must say, I do applaud Stacy and anyone who throws their stuff out there for rejection. I just hope she can rise above my pseudo venom and take what I spit out for what it is, just a critique.
