"I...Have...No...Skin."

About a week ago, I was in New York City on vacation with two of my cousins (who are also two of my closest fans). We decided to see a couple of shows while we were there -- and really, "a couple of shows" is about as much as visitors can afford, I've discovered. We ended up seeing Spiderman and, on a whim, a play called Seminar because it has Snape-- I mean, Alan Rickman in it.


(Oddly enough, none of the characters looked like they do in this poster. Advertising, amIright?)

Coincidentally, Seminar (by Theresa Rebeck) is all about writers and the writing industry. Rickman plays a blunt, wordly writing instructor who doesn't care if he insults a student's work. In one instance, he refuses to critique a workshop piece beyond the first five words because he said if nobody cares about the character after the first five words, you've already lost.

Naturally, the students in the play had a hard time adjusting to his brutal honesty. His argument was that writers have to be incredibly thick-skinned because if they can't take criticism from their teacher, they'll never survive under the critics' much harsher lashing. This long-standing piece of advice later came up again when the teacher's own career was scrutinized. Rebeck managed to take knowledge that is common to writers and transform it into action.

The play kind of felt like one big inside joke-- and at times, lesson-- directed at writers. Dunno how the rest of the audience felt about it, but if their laughs were any indicator, they got it just fine.

Now, this play has brief nudity and a lot of profanity, so I wouldn't recommend it for a really young crowd (especially if you don't want to hear "Snape" say "balls"-- and worse, haha). But I think every aspiring writer can relate to this show. If you're comfortable with PG-13 material and get a chance to see it-- or even to read it-- do. It'll ring a lot of bells.

 

Has your writing ever been ripped to shreds by someone of authority? How have you reacted? Or have you had teachers in other subjects who seemed too critical? Did it turn out they were right?

I'd love to hear about your experiences! I know I've been there many times. Sometimes it can be really hard to hear, and all you want to do is rip up your work and pretend it never existed. But I find it also makes me want to do better. And of all the harsh criticism I've received on past work, a lot of it- maybe even most of it- was pretty accurate. In fact, I think some of my best work has come out of it, because it really pushed me to not "accept good enough as good enough." <- That's paraphrasing a quote I read once (sorry, I don't know who said it-- and can't seem to find the source). It's not always possible to "never accept good enough as good enough," but sometimes those harsh words are really saying, "You can do better. I know it's in you. Now go find it."