The Criticism That Changed My Life
Contributor
Written by
Marisel Vera
June 2011
Contributor
Written by
Marisel Vera
June 2011

         One of my dreams came true just a few days ago—I talked about my debut novel IF I BRING YOU ROSES at Chicago’s Printers Row Lit Fest.  My friend, the fabulous Tayari Jones, was on the same panel for her new novel SILVER SPARROW.  Tayari and I met years ago at a novel writing workshop taught by Cristina García, one of my idols. After the panel, Tayari and I had lunch and I told her how that workshop changed my life. 

          “That’s your first She Writes Countdown post,” Tayari said.

          I make it a point to listen to people I admire, so here goes.

          I’d traveled from Oklahoma, where I was living, to California to study with Cristina García at the VONA (Voices of Our Nation) summer workshop. It was so important to me that my husband took vacation to care for our children while I enjoyed San Francisco and Cristina’s class.  We students had sent the first chapter of our novels in advance for group discussion and critique. By chance, my chapter was scheduled last. (Cristina García would read my chapter!)  Cristina García is not only a talented writer but a gifted teacher able to pin point the weaknesses of one’s work and offer advice on improvement.  I remember clearly that Cristina wore a black gauzy blouse over black pants when she set my chapter down on the table and placed her hand on my typed twenty pages.

          “This is a well-crafted chapter with good workman like prose,” Cristina García said, before pointing out a few examples.  One was how I’d written something general about my character’s hands when specificity is the secret to good writing.

          I sat in that chair como nada without showing how devastated I felt. Another writer later complimented me on how well I could take criticism.  Cristina proceeded to teach us an exercise to help us elevate the language in our writing.  She had instructed us to bring a volume of poetry which we opened at random and read aloud a stanza or two.  A few days before I’d walked to Chinatown and had found a used copy of Sylvia Plath’s Ariel.  I opened the book and my eye fell on the poem Stings. I read aloud the following:

 

          Of winged, unmiraculous women,

          Honey-drudgers.

          I am no drudge

          Though for years I have eaten dust

          And dried plates with my dense hair.

 

          I told myself it was a coincidence.

 

          Cristina told us how whenever she is at an impasse in her writing, if she turned to a volume of poems, somehow she would be sure to open to a page where a word or phrase would catch her imagination and inspire her writing. This exercise also has the additional benefit of helping to move your own writing out of the assembly line and up to the lofty level of the prose of which you dream. I left Cristina García’s workshop determined to make the time to read poetry before writing prose.  I’ve found poetry has helped me to become attuned to the cadences and nuances of the voices speaking in my head.  Sentences show their clunker personalities sooner. I’ve also found that it can help me learn to empathize with a character.  For example, one of my protagonists in my novel IF I BRING YOU ROSES is a factory worker.  I chose WHAT WORK IS and THE MERCY by Phillip Levine to help me understand how a man feels working at a menial job.  To gain better insight into the Puerto Rican male, I relied on IMAGINE THE ANGELS OF BREAD by Martín Espada and MARACAS by Victor Hernández Cruz.

          After ten years and many workman-like manuscript drafts dumped in the recycling bin, my debut novel IF I BRING YOU ROSES will be published by Grand Central Publishing, August 2011.

 

          On the cover of IF I BRING YOU ROSES:

 

            “A richly told tale of obsessive love…deeply sensual and mysterious.”

          -Cristina García, author of Dreaming in Cuban

 

          I still aspire to be like Cristina García, whose beautiful prose is akin to poetry. And I will always be grateful to her for calling my writing well-crafted and workman-like because, although at the time it was very painful, it taught me to be humble about my work yet to strive for beauty. I honestly don’t know if I would be a soon to be published author without that criticism.

 

 

          She Writers--Has a critique or criticism changed your life?

 

Visit Marisel’s website at www.mariselvera.com

 

Connect with Marisel Vera through her She Writes page:

http://www.shewrites.com/profile/MariselVera

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Comments
  • caitlyn James

    My undergraduate degree is in creative writing. The model the university employed was round table criticism. Everyone had a copy of everyone's offering for the day and had had a chance to make notes and write all over said offering. Before handing the paper back to the author, now with its many a-splendoured colouration, one was required to speak a specific criticism. Praise and positivity was allowed - as long as an insightful critique followed. 

     

    My skin thickened a bit but mostly what happened was I became curious. At first, you bargain and guess and try to figure out the prejudices of your attackers, but then someone says something wise, and the next comment is relevant to thoughts you were having already, and across the table your eyes meet someone who offers their confusion and you realize your mistake. A game of making use of as many comments and criticisms as possible while learning to discount those that would change, irrevocably, the trajectory of your meaning freed me from at least some of the pain of criticism.

     

    But I'd still rather be published and praised than endure the "game" and wisdom of the workshop. I await further evolution. Thanks for sharing a piece of yours.

  • Love Babz

    I am inspired by you.  Criticism can be of use...it either cocoons  us or sets us free.  I do believe you were set free!

  • Sarah Martin Byrd

    Enjoyed your post Marisel. A writer must have very thick skin. Please check out my blog at www.sarahmartinbyrd.com/blog/

  • Very nice post Marisel. I am a VONA alumni myself. I kind of agree with Heather. Well-crafted sounds good but I think I understand. That was mild compared to what I was told at a workshop at Squaw Valley Writers Workshop. An agent from one of the biggest literary agencies was my workshop leader that particular day. She got to my manuscript and said she wanted to read something first. She read #2 of Elmore Leonard's Tips for Good Writing. "Avoid Prologues." Gasp! What had I submitted but a prologue and first chapter. I could have sunk in the grass we were sitting on. I have wrestled with this for years, taken it out, put it back in, made it a first chapter. I finally made my peace with it as I became more secure and better at writing.

     

    Dera R. Williams
    Author/Reviewer/Editor
    Mother Wit: Stories of Mothers and Daughters
    Available at Amazon.com

     

     

     

     

  • Kelly Simmons

    A lovely post -- and excellent advice for us all!

     

    Kelly Simmons

    Simon & Schuster author of STANDING STILL and THE BIRD HOUSE

  • Erin Jamison

    Critiques have validated that I have talent...at least to me. I'm a worry wart by nature...so I worry about everything. I worry that I haven't put enough sensuality in the story. I worry that I put too much sensuality in or that I haven't given the characters enough shape. So far, the critiques that I've received had all validated that I can tell a story that connects to an audience. That's cool. Someone told me a while back that I was a perfectionist and I totally wanted to argue but it was an epiphany. The things that gut me, is when I get back  a draft from the editor and it looks like they nearly bled over the page because it's covered in corrections. That rocks my foundation sometimes. Luckily enough, I have an editor that pumps me up after she tears me down.

  • Sue Urie

    Marisel you are SO right...at least based on my own writing challenges anyway. Getting what I am thinking to flow nice and natural in wordspeak can be a tough gig.  Referencing poetry worked wonders for a story of mine published in Island Parent Magazine in August of '09.  It was the first in a four-part series on motherhood, writing and healing. Anyway I had written "Grief Written Down" more like a journal entry or blog post.  I was grieving and I turned to writing, as I always have done and will do,  and so the words fell out out of my head kinda raw.  Kinda like this comment:) 

    When I was editing the story, tweaking and tightening it up to meet the infamous submission guidelines, I kept heading back to the words of a poem I had read when I was doing a little research on grief and its presence in craft of writing.  By research of course....I mean I Googled 'grief and writing'.  One of the hits eventually linked me to a poem entitled 'When I am Asked" by Lisel Mueller.  Whenever I found myself meandering away from what I was actually trying to convey in the piece I would refer back to the first six lines of that poem.  It was so helpful to me that it seemed wrong not to include it when I submitted my story to the editor for proofing.  I placed it at the top of the page before my words even began and wondered if Island Parent would choose to keep it there. 

    I remember how excited I was to see my story in the published form, between the pages for real, and not only because it was my first feature for the magazine.  I was also so pleased to see  "When I am Asked" right where I had placed it.  Lisel Mueller's words inspired and encouraged me to keep my own truths in that story and deserved to be up front.  

    I'll definitely be checking out the poems mentioned in your SheWrites essay....which is fabulous! And I'm with Heather Summerhayes Cariou.....well-crafted and workmanlike prose is all good isn't it?  

    Congrats on your book!  Happy Writing...     

  • Shari A. Brady

    I can relate, Marisel.  I am presently enrolled in the U of Chicago certificate of creative writing program and my instructor this term pointed out where I was able to immerse the reader into story and character and where he could hear my voice. His advice has changed my life!  Also, did you know Pat Conroy reads poetry before he sits down to write as well?  Thanks for a great post and congrats on your book!

  • Leah Kaminsky

    Ugh, and to correct my second sentence, "Poetry and lyrical prose *are*." I should really edit things before pushing post!

  • Leah Kaminsky

    Interesting post, Marisel, and congratulations on your book! Poetry is and lyrical prose is definitely a great inspiration, whether or not your own writing is lyrical itself.

    Yes, critiques have changed my life, though I think like all writers I've had to learn when I am in a place to receive them without crushing my creative seed. I was struggling a lot with repetition in my prose when a well-established writer in an MFA summer program gave me a withering critique. I could see him growing increasingly frustrated on the page. His handwriting went from neat letters to scrawled near-expletives to exclamation points to nothing. He even wrote, "I won't belabor the weaknesses in your writing here." I was devastated. At that time, I was still drawn to write because of ideas, dialogue, and character; that is, what I could *do* in these fictional worlds. I told myself that worrying about precision and tonality was for other writers who were more lyrical, that this simply was not what my writing was about. I sobbed to my roommates for many hours, and I even teared up a bit when I stumbled on the critique again the other day.

    But then I looked at what he said (before he lost it in a way that horrifies me as a teacher), and he really was right. I emailed him, and he told me to experiment with short shorts, that he considered this form the perfect lab for experimenting with words and sentences. He asked me to work with shorter sentences, which I had always avoided because I find them depressing. I did, and the results were amazing. This whole side of me came out that I didn't even know existed. I was able to access emotions and create images in an entirely new way. I furthered the experiment by aping the grammatical style in the opening paragraphs of my favorite novels. Now, several years later, another established writer said in a critique that I had a natural grasp of the lyrical sentence. Who? Me? I'm just not sure I would have gone there had I not been pushed. Shoved, really.

    I think what you articulate here gets back to that essential knowledge a writer must have about her own process. Criticism will always be difficult to take, especially from writers you respect. It's up to each of us to know both how to open ourselves up to it and when to say, "Not now, not when things are so fresh."

    Thanks for sharing your experiences. They really resonated with me.

  • Rebecca Burke

    I really appreciate this post, Marisel. As a former writing teacher and longtime writer/editor, I have read so many books about the writing process--where to find inspiration, ideas, technique, you name it. Reading more poetry would probably be more useful than all the traditional writing books put together. Thank you for that reminder.

  • Nicole Lisa

    Lovely inspiration on many levels, Marisel! So much that I did a quick blog post on my thoughts about poetry intersecting with authority, as discussed by Malinda Lo on her blog today: What I learned on the Diversity Tour Thanks!

  • Well-crafted and workman-like prose is high praise.  Can't figure why that would upset you!

  • Joyce Wycoff

    Thanks for this post and the journey it reveals.  I love the idea of reading poetry before writing prose.  What an incredible cover comment from Cristina Garcia.  Best wishes with your book.

  • RYCJ Revising

    Marisel, your headline drew me to this post, and that's a nice piece of prose there...the 'Of winged, unmiraculous women...'
    While I don't believe there is any one criticism that has changed my life, I do keep with me a critque that has surfaced more than once about my writing. I keep hearing I need to 'divulge more,' though I'm reluctant... I think there's a such thing as being too nosey.