P.S. The Critic Loves You (Honestly)
After rejection, editorially, artistically, or emotionally, the day seems too long. It winds down slow. I did not anticipate any of it. Writing takes me down a natural course, so rejection stings because honesty is difficult. Writing, mine, yours, is never insignificant, and who but a fool wants to let go of it?
Partner, friend, or critic will never give an honest idea, horizon to horizon, how rejection will feel.
The critic will tell you writing is a prize worthy of pursuing. Validating a viewpoint.
Very few, whether critics, lovers, friends, have any sense of the sweat and labor put into any work.
Now look, for God’s sake. All this is just twaddle. I’ve never sent a manuscript to anyone, let alone an agent or publisher. There are many reasons. I’ve put everything in the way. Writing and rewriting, editing, continuity, none of which give me the kind of joy that thrashing my oddness onto paper ever does, or is ever likely to do.
In a way it is a relief to know I haven’t got it. Whatever it is.
The universe revolves, the critic will find a new hopeful to reject, but trust me, when the rust and dust of the critic’s mind are gone, a great writer will emerge because he learned about criticism.
I never depend on the reality of the reader more than I trust my own imagination.
At each dawn’s edge criticism is made of mere perception, and not much more.
© Harry Hogg 2020
