i

Her name was Smidge and I didn’t know her very well. I was okay with that because the more I knew, I realized the less we had in common. Smidge spent a lot of her time on social media, and of that time a large portion of it was dedicated to Tumblr. When anyone tells me they’re an active Tumblr user, I translate it as “Take a guess how socially awkward I am.” If that same person would describe themselves as a “Superwholockian,” I no longer have to guess. We didn’t hang out much, Smidge and I. Over the years of collected memories, she would have faded in the back of my mind and you wouldn’t be reading what you are now. But then I had a writing class with Smidge, now she’s a story I tell everyone.

Writers write what interests them. No duh. No one wants to spend their time writing boring topics unless they’re being paid for it. Reading gives you a peek at an author’s personality, interests, hobbies, and occasionally what they read. For Superwholockian Smidge, she wrote about two topics exclusively: fan fiction and future Tumblr posts. That fateful day in our writing class, she submitted a Tumblr post.

As it goes, Smidge spent a night standing in line to meet the cast of Harry Potter, not the entire cast mind you, just the Weasley twins. The piece she submitted described at great length how Smidge became unraveled the longer she stood in line until at last, she was shaking hands with the actors, smiling, taking pictures, hugging, and then how she left the theater. And that was it. She finished reading to a silent room, which is actually pretty normal. There’s always a lull after a reading ends where everyone is waiting for someone else to speak up first.

Here’s the thing about critiques, you want to be thorough but respective. The only thing people learn when you’re being rude is that you’re an asshole. Criticism should be constructive, not insulting. You’re all there to get better. Regardless of the quality of the work, you should pinpoint some level of skillful writing and compliment it. At the core, everyone wants to feel validated and they want to feel that the effort they put in was ultimately worth it. I had to remind myself of all this because there was nothing remarkable, or good, or even noticeable about Smidge’s piece. It was exceptionally beige. Luckily I didn’t have to say all the things I had in mind, the class instructor was more than willing.

And she laid into Smidge. Every issue I had was vocalized to a fine edge to cut her down. “It was vacuous, it didn’t go anywhere, there wasn’t anything of substance or notability,” and it went on like that for a while. By the time the instructor was finished, the room was somehow quieter than before. Smidge sat dumbfounded. Another classmate raised his voice and took a moment to say something kind about the piece. Then another classmate did the same. And another, and another. I kind of regret not being one of those students. Maybe because I felt the critique wasn’t entirely unwarranted. Could it have been handled better? More than likely. But I also feel being kind to Smidge would not have taught her anything.

 

ii

I had a teacher named Joe. I liked Joe. He was angry and brimming with cynicism and had a tendency to break off into tangential rants that ultimately led nowhere. But you walked out of the classroom feeling like you learned something that day, even if it wasn’t about writing (he once spent a good chunk of time mulling over the question, “Would you rather fight a hundred duck sized horses or one horse sized duck?”) But I also felt bad for Joe, because at the end of every semester students were required to turn in a portfolio of varying quality. That’s a nice way of saying that most of them were really terrible (I should know, I submitted at least three). Days leading up to the due date, you could see Joe was exhausted just at the thought of reading dozens of 10+ page portfolios. But it didn’t end for him there.

Just before you submit your portfolios, you had to sign up for a time to meet with Joe in his office to talk about your work. This meant that for twenty minutes, Joe’s ranting was about you. You would sit with Joe in his office and he would vivisect your work, saying cutting remark after cutting remark while you sat there and considered switching majors. He would call your work derivative, berate, deride, and compare it to every other book he ever read.

“This,” Joe would circle a passage with his pen, “doesn’t work for me.”

One time I got really close to an actual compliment with, “You were onto something here. You were so close to making this work, but you just didn’t get there.”

Only once did Joe say to me, “I liked this one.”

He would put me through the shredder as he did everyone, and you were expected to take it. Buckle up buttercup, because the next twenty minutes of disparagement is probably going to be the closest thing you’ll get to praise from an unimpressed, real world view. Apparently, during one session I sat in the chair unemotive long enough to raise concern.

Joe cocked an eyebrow at me, “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Okay, because I’m tearing into you here and you haven’t said anything.”

“Oh no, I’m totally cool,” I said to him. “Everything you’re saying now, I’ve already told myself last night.”

And Joe raised both his eyebrows and then nodded.

I knew my pieces didn’t work. I knew what was wrong with them. I was trying too hard to be Robert Coover but didn’t have the wit or originality for it. I knew the only thing that could possibly save them was trashing them and starting from scratch. But in that moment something clicked and not to be all after school special, but I realized that my harshest critic was me and I was the only person I needed to impress. Joe could say as many shitty things as he wanted because I’ve heard it all before. As weird as it sounds, it was reaffirming. Someone else could see what I saw and put into words what I couldn’t. From there I could sieve a pertinent critique rather than hear disheartening words.

People will put you down, whether intentional or not, maybe they’ll be envious, or careless, or just antipathic. My line of reasoning is, why let them beat you to the punch? Point out your own flaws before everyone else does it for you. Self-deprecation is just another form of self-awareness. Consult with your inner demons because deep down you can sense when something is wrong, or missing, or just off. And when you realize what makes you awful, you start filtering out all the opinions that mean nothing and more aware of the opinions that mean something.