Thread by @squidlord

For the record, and I would like to be clear about this, I have been a writer, creator, and consultant for products since the early 90s. You can find early things I wrote on USENET. #writing #criticism #art #SocialMedia

sites.google.com/view/5150-batt… 1/35

If you happen to read, watch, or otherwise consume something that I have created and you have criticisms, however sharp and/or pointed – tell me.

Publicly! 2/35

Write bad reviews on GoodReads. Write scathing analyses on Amazon (because yes, some of my work has been published and is available on Amazon). Send nasty letters to my publishers and link to copies on Twitter. 3/35

Set up an entire blog devoted to taking down ideas that I advocate for in my own media. Create an entire YouTube channel which does nothing else but pick apart every single thing I do in public and tear it to shreds. 4/35

Please.

Because your spite is the best advertising I will ever have. 5/35

I'm not sure where this soft culture of expectation that believes writers and other creators should be emotionally weak to the point they can't be criticized and their work cannot be dissected, but you people need to get over it. 6/35

There is no respect in treating a creator with kid gloves. You do no respect to the work if it is legitimately flawed and you do no respect to the creator by pretending that they can't do any better than that. 7/35

You talk about "kindness" without actually understanding it or caring about it or realizing that it is not, shockingly, the end-all/be-all of human interaction.

For the love of all that is unholy, care about my stuff enough to hate it. Or care about me enough to hate me. 8/35

Either way works out just fine. Do me that kindness. 9/35

For a real creator, one who cares about their work enough to put it out in public, the worst thing you can do is to have no opinion, no feeling, about the piece. 10/35

Back when I was doing movie reviews, the scale went from -5 to +5. (I really love the FUDGE scale for so many things.) #TrailerTrash



(Has it really been 9 years? Man, we were just flailing around back then ...) 11/35

The worst possible reading was zero. Goose egg. Null. Because that meant no one on the show cared enough to have a single emotional or intellectual reaction to the movie. 12/35

As a creator, putting things out for public consumption is easy these days. No matter what your choice of media, it's easy.

As a consumer, finding things to read, watch, experience – that is also extremely easy and low friction. 13/35

For perhaps the first time in the history of mankind, it is extremely easy for the people in the latter group to tell the people in the former group how they feel about it. 14/35

The number of your audience that will bother to exert the effort to get back in touch with you is going to be 3% on a good day. Whether they love it or hate it. 15/35

There is no kindness to be expected, just a giant ocean into which you throw your work and hope for a bubble but which is usually just wine-dark and still.

jstor.org/stable/642564 16/35

Maybe part of the problem is the ease with which creation can be thrown out in front of the wolves.

Back in the day, the only way you would get serious feedback was firstly when you submitted your piece to a publisher, whether it be a magazine or a book publisher. 17/35

Every day they received massive piles of manuscripts that your piece had to compete with in order to see daylight in front of other people.

"Slush piles", they're called, still.. For good reason, because most everything in them is crap. 18/35

The best publishers, which for my personal preference and genre is science fiction and fantasy, are the ones who would reject you brutally and send notes back on your piece about every bad thing you had done.

The more brutal, the better. 19/35

Because they were in a hurry and they saw dozens, if not hundreds, of pieces a day. Every common flaw rubbed them raw in a massive, bleeding intellectual blister.

The kindest thing you could do for them was send them a story which was flawed in an entirely new way. 20/35

They would tell you, and in a sense that was very high praise. 21/35

(As an aside, it's not like editors have disappeared. There are magazines which still exist, collections which still exist, and book publishers which still exist. 22/35

Though they continue to work very hard at making sure that their traditional publishing architecture can and will fail given every opportunity. But that's an entirely different issue and I think @SarahAHoyt covers that better than I can.) 23/35

That's when you get better. When someone sees your work, knows your work, and takes the time to tell you where you got it wrong. In the definitely idealistic expectation you'll do better next time. 24/35

The idea that the creator should be shielded from criticism, wherever it occurs, however it occurs, it's pretty despicable. It's disrespectful. It's infantilizing.

And perhaps worst of all, it doesn't lead to better work. It never has. It can't. 25/35

I want my work to be better tomorrow than it was yesterday. I want it to be better day after tomorrow than it is tomorrow.

But it can't be – it literally cannot be – unless people see it, care about it, and tear into me as hard as I'm willing to tear into others. 26/35

Likewise, I can't keep doing the things that people like in my work if people don't see it, care about it, and come back and tell me that they enjoyed it and why they enjoyed it.

I can't get better as a creator if only one of those things happens. 27/35

If only the praise happens, I can only become a worse creator. I can make art which fails.

Yes, art can fail. Your works can fail. The only people that say "art can't fail" are people who don't do art.

A piece that fails to convey your intention has failed. 28/35

If you are drawing an apple and it doesn't look like an apple, it failed. If you were writing a story about 16th-century Central America and it has nothing in common with 16th-century Central America, it failed. 29/35

If you are writing a story about two teenagers in love who are so tangled up in their emotional existence that they commit suicide and nobody believes or feels that love connection between the characters, it failed. 30/35

Art can fail and anyone who tries to make art on a regular basis will tell you that it fails all the time. Those of the things you wad up and throw in the trash.

effectiviology.com/sturgeons-law/ 31/35

If you don't know enough yet to recognize the difference between something that needs to be public, that needs to be published, and the stuff that needs to be wadded up and tried again – you need criticism. 32/35

You must be cruel to be kind in the right measure.

33/35

I want you to be better. I want me to be better.

So go out, find everything I've ever done, deconstruct it, tear it apart. Then tell me about it.

Viciously, if you please. Aggressively. Uncompromisingly.

Your feedback could be complete shit. 34/35

Sturgeon's Law applies to everything equally. But that's my problem to work out, not yours.

My job is to get better at being a creator and I can't be afraid of it.

I'm not going to. 35/35