On Developing Thick Skin

Here stands the mighty rhino: large, horned, and with a very thick skin. A noble beast. (Depicted here by Albrecht Durer, although he'd never seen the animal himself, but I digress.)

As authors we create worlds, characters, and entire situations out of our imaginations. We nurture these elements in our subconscious and then commit them to paper as story. Sometimes it takes us years to make the decision to show this to others. Sometimes we never do.

But maybe one day we muster up our courage and find someone to critique us and they do. How do we deal with the fact that they have suggestions on how to improve this gem, born from our creative soul? How do we deal with them not telling us it's perfect? How do we deal with an honest opinion that may be kind but suggests that we still have a lot of work to do on something we thought was done and perfect? (And why oh why did we even ask for someone to tell us what they think?)

The reason I ask is that it happened to me. In this case, I was the giver. The recipient was someone I don't know. They won the critique in a drawing. As with any critique I give (or contest entry I evaluate), I spent a lot of time forming my opinions and was very careful of how I presented them. In this case, the writing was lovely but the storytelling needed some help. But here's the rub. I sent off that critique a week ago and have not heard a peep from the recipient although they were always quick to write me back prior to that. And it's been worrying me off and on ever since. Because I wonder if, perhaps, their skin was so thin, they were hurt by my comments and suggestions.

Or maybe it's my skin that's thin since I've been worrying about it.

But . . . moving on. I've also been thinking about this because of the highly visible brouhaha that developed between Dear Author and Tess Gerritsen. I've always admired Tess for being frank on her blog, for sharing her ride, her wisdom, and her insecurities with us. But as a result of this cyber-skirmish, Tess indicates she will blog no longer. Perhaps her humor was in poor taste in the post that brought this to a head. Perhaps it was misunderstood. Whatever the case, she can't take the heat it has engendered. (For which, BTW, I make no judgment.) Still, it makes me pause. Here is a NYT best-selling author who doesn't have the rhinoceros skin necessary to have survived such a situation, and I hurt for her.

It could be that I'm spending more time thinking about this than I would normally because I just received that review from Romantic Times. As pleased as I am with what they said, I know there will be people who don't like my book as much. There may even be people who don't like it at all.

My career in Hollywood has shown me that it isn't easy being a public creative person. As I become more public, I wonder if I will handle the slings and arrows as well as I think I can. I haven't worked in tinseltown all these years for nothing. Have I?