The Ant Men test

When I was a kid, I read everything that I could get my hands on.  It got to the point that I started reading the labels on our canned goods at the dining room table.  My teachers, in an effort to feed my voracious appetite for words, gave me old textbooks and readers to take home... all of which I promptly and greedily studied and scrutinized.  By this time I had also read every book in the school library.  Now, along with my love of reading, I also longed for adventure (as if living in East New York, Brooklyn during the '60's & '70's wasn't adventure enough!).  I loved westerns, Sci-fi, action-adventure, horror... anything that involved danger and feats of derring-do!  I loved the idea of adventure in faraway lands, with an element of danger to spice things up! 

One day while at the school library, the librarian recommended a book that had just arrived in their collection, it was titled, "The Ant Men" by Eric North.  The colorful cover immediately caught my attention, and I spent the rest of the school year reading the entire book over and over, from cover to cover, at least ten times!  It wasn't that the book was particularly that great, but it contained all of the ingredients necessary to keep me thoroughly engaged!  I loved it (imagine, more than 50 years later and I still remember it vividly)!  When the next school year started, the first thing I did was to rush to the library and checked this same book out of the library.  Then, as I leafed through it's pages looking for all of the great illustrations that I remembered, I was dismayed to find that the drawings were all gone!  When I reported this to the librarian, she told me that the book never had those illustrations.  Apparently my imagination, coupled with the vivid storytelling in the book, had been enough for my mind to make up a bunch of artwork that didn't really exist!

So why am I telling you this story?  Because my question to you today is... does your writing pass the "Ant Men" test? 

Now, I'm not saying that your work must have the power to conjure up non-existent illustrations in the minds of your readers, but your work must still have the ability to capture your reader's attention - if not their imagination.  A reader must be able to momentarily suspend their existence in their world in order to immerse themselves totally in yours.  Your reader must be able to trade places with the characters in your book.  Your protagonist's concerns must become their concerns, the things that make up their world and their life experiences, must for the time that your reader is involved with your work, become what they see, hear,taste and feel.  If not, then sorry but you have failed your reader.

Katie Oldham, author of the "Love of your Life series, once said, "Have you ever realized how surreal reading a book actually is? You stare at marked slices of tree for hours on end, hallucinating vividly."

And that's pretty much the gist of it.  You want your readers to forget about the reality of things, and instead choose to believe in the reality that you have created for them.  You want your writing to be vivid enough for them to believe in it as much, or even more, than you do.  You want your words to form the artwork in their mind that brings them back for more.

Does your writing pass the Ant Men test?

Haters Gonna Hate (Reprinted from 2015)

Writers write. Painters paint. Knitters knit. Haters hate. Yes, unfortunately the phenomenon of various people disliking you for no real or obvious reason exists. I hope you're not shocked... or even dismayed. That's just the way it is and always has been. Remember the story of Cain and Abel? Joseph and his brothers? Haters gonna hate.

  Why am I bringing this up? Because I talk to a lot of writers and artists, and one common topic of discussion is how often a person's creative work is met with negative comments, open derision, or even outright hostility. Unfortunately, especially among aspiring and new writers and artists, this can be devastating. At the very least the actions of a "hater" can cause someone to second guess their work or even their career choice.

  Don't let this happen to you. The vast majority of people in the world are not only not creative, but don't understand the creative process. Some of these folks, not all but some, even feel that it's their duty to "offer" their version of they think of as "constructive criticism."  It is much easier for these folks to pick out real or imagined flaws with your work than it is to say something encouraging. I remember that right after my first novel was published, I excitedly handed out free copies to family and friends.  To my dismay, I learned that most of them never bothered to read it, and the only comment I received from the one person that claimed that they actually did read it was, "It has a lot of grammatical errors."  Do folks do or say these kind of things out of some sort of bias? Jealousy? Anger? Actual hate?  Do they actually believe that they're helping somehow? Who knows? But what I do know is that the subtle or not so subtle poison they so willingly offer to a creative person can have the effect of discouraging a creative soul and in extreme circumstances even sabotaging a budding or existing art or writing career. And that's a doggone shame.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about folks that offer up actual insight concerning your work, or truly constructive criticism, or sincere feedback. I'm talking about those folks that casually toss you negative remarks about your work (or writing in general); sometimes in an off-handed, I can't be bothered kind of way. I remember one person telling me that he placed my book in his bathroom since that's where he does most of his reading... was I too sensitive in feeling mildly insulted?  Was that his way of telling me what he thought of my novel?  I know that I would never tell someone that I keep his/her work in my bathroom.  I know an extremely talented and creative person whose work was constantly disparaged by an art professor to the point where this artist was on the verge of giving up.  The artist however stuck it out and is now much sought after in the art world... including by that same professor who, having forgotten his negative haranguing of this artist, now praises those same exact works of art he once ridiculed and tries to get her to attend his conferences or exhibitions.  The thing is that this person's actions show that his initial disapproval was triggered by something other than simple artistic opinion. Was racism involved? sexism? Did he have a knee-jerk dislike for this person's lifestyle? Either way, he was willing to destroy this person's self-esteem and budding artistic career.

  So what can be done? Well, there's not much you can do about the hater other than staying away from them or just not including them in your creative process. But there is something you can do about YOU. Creative people are notoriously thin-skinned. You have to toughen up and realize that some people will just never support you or see what you do as being a worthy enterprise. In that case, suck it up, dust yourself off, and get back to work. Not everyone is going to be a fan. Just like not everyone can write or paint or play the cello or crochet a capelet. You have something special to say via your art so get to it, that takes precedence over the negative mewlings of any naysayer.

  And haters? Well, they're just gonna hate.