I had my first traumatizing encounter with ignorant criticism in my English class over a piece I wrote about mothers. I based my piece on the Makepeace Thackeray quote:
"Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children."
Granted, I knew the quote because of the movie "The Crow" but it stayed with me and I felt it was a good jumping off point to describe what motherhood means to me...Oh why did I do that!!
I know that even mentioning the word God in any public place is a dangerous thing because people don't hear past the word, but I didn't expect it to be that bad...
Instead of my classmates hearing the point of what I wrote they heard that I was saying mothers are like God, or are God, and before I knew it, every person commenting on my piece was using the word offended either because they were spiritual or because they don't believe in God. Even one person said something about that she was offended because "what about women who get raped...." which I don't even know where that came from.
Only one person got the point of my 30 min essay, and understood that what I was expressing was the sentiment of the quote. That the way a baby feels or sees their mother is similar to the way some people feel about their God, and that to be a mother is a great responsibility.
Later after the shock of that shit storm passed (took a few days) I was able to laugh at it.
I finally had me a true writers moment. To be a writer is to express yourself, open your heart, and risk getting it trampled on for the sake of your art.
I walked the gauntlet of the writer.
But it wasn't until I had go back to that class and read another essay out loud (I was so nervous I wanted to puke) that I knew I was going to be ok.
Ironically enough one of the topics our teacher gave us that day was terror. So I wrote about my issues with stage fright, the very thing I was coping with in that moment.
I described terror and how it wasn't anything like fear, which it is confused with so often in our society. I told of my first experience with stage fright, describing in first person detail what I went through. But this time after I finished reading my piece to the class, I got nothing but really positive comments and high praise. They loved it, they loved how I wrote, how I made them feel what I was going through, how clear I was, and some even said I should write novels because listening to my essay made them want to hear more.
It was like I had entered an alternate universe, a Bizarro world if you will. Within a week I went from being the shit on the bottom of everyone's shoe, to a writer worthy of publishing novels.
I wont lie...I left that classroom feeling high as a kite. But as I was leaving I checked myself.
Man can be a fickle creature. We can love something one minuet and despise it the next. Just because they liked my latest piece doesn't mean they will love my future essays. I can fall from grace just as easily as I rose.
The way I see it is at least I now know that I can survive a painful shit storm of criticism and come out the other side swinging.
I am finally walking the true path of the writer...
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