Critique is hard to take

I like Anne Lamott. She makes me feel sane by admitting we're all crazy.

Here's what she says on getting her work critiqued: "My first response ... is never profound relief that I have someone in my life who will be honest with me and help me do the very best work of which I am capable. No, my first thought is Well, I'm sorry, but I can't be friends with you anymore, because you have too many problems. And you have a bad personality. And a bad character. Sometimes I can't get words to come out of my mouth because I am so disaapointed, as if they had said [my son] Sam were ugly and boring and spoiled and I should let him go."

I'm afraid I let the internet folks I mentioned yesterday get to me, and I snapped at them, which I'm ashamed of. (I'm not going back to see what happened after that.) I forgot -- again -- that I am not the poem. It's easy to forget. The act of writing is so intense and personal, it's hard not to take it personally. There are plenty of days when I wanted to take Vivid down -- I feel exposed with it up. Even the mildest criticism makes my chest tighten and my eyes burn. (I feel as if I might either cry or kick something -- usually the critic.)

But criticism -- good crit -- is valuable. I'm intensely grateful for Zeugma, and for non-Z writing friends like Claudia, Clare, Marta. The give and take there swings me along, and has swung many a poem higher than I thought it would ever go. It was hard to get critiqued out of the blue. I felt and feel a bit flattened. But I think it's my fault, not theirs, so y'all can stop sending me how-dare-they messages now. They're trying to learn and to help me learn.

Apropos, I'm changing my sig. It currently says "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd." But having spent a lot of time in the last week around Odd people in firm possession of Truth, I'm changing it back to "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." To remind me not to snap at them again.