Creative Mortification

by Sandra Gail Lambert

Creative Mortification

"Wow, this is kick ass writing." I was reading through my own short story in preparation for sending it out on submission. "And the character development of the musk ox and wolf is spot on!" I keep reading and keep being amazed with my own self. "And the ending! People will gasp and cry. I'm crying."

You, the reader, are cringing, right? You're embarrassed for me. I'm embarrassed for myself. We writers aren't supposed to think like this. Usually, when I'm the most pleased about a piece, I hit the save key, close the laptop, and think, to myself, "Well, that is not complete crap."

A mean writer thing is that we sneer, quietly, behind our hands, at writers who say stuff like this out loud. We (I) listen to them and think how unseemly, arrogant, and probably deluded they are. Without reading a word of their work, we (I) decide their writing is lazy and sloppy. At least I didn't exclaim about my fabulous writing where any one could hear.

But then I did. A writer friend visited, and I started in on my recently serialized-on-Substack novel. How I'd edited the whole thing one more time before I created the e-book. How I became enamored of it even more than I had been. It was a damn good thriller of a novel. I just couldn't believe that none of those one hundred and seventy-eight agents and publishers had been interested. I try to stop myself. I hand her the bowl filled with chocolate-covered cherries. I take one myself and hope having to chew will slow my tirade. But I suck that chocolate glaze off my teeth and keep going.

Mind you, all this rejection took place years in the past. And I'm quite happy with how the novel was received on Substack. And I made more money than I have on any other publication. (Not a high bar.) And my friend knows all of this. She was there. She doesn't say anything. I conclude with the classic, useless writers' lament about the unfairness of the publishing world and then pop another cherry in my mouth. 

This time, when I finish chewing, I ask my friend about her own writing. She's known for saying "I'm having trouble focusing." But if you ask specific questions, you find out that since last you checked she's generated an essay, two poems, and written four book reviews that she's already found homes for. Also, she's had a batch of poems rejected and three accepted in various journals. She's a stealth writing machine. I want to be her. 

I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm not on any new prescriptions that list vainglorious as a side effect. Sure, I am living in Florida with the daily horror of yet another new fascist law. But I don't think being emotionally fraught could twist my personality this much. I'm between writing projects which means I'm sort of lost. Maybe all this is me resting on my laurels until I'm writing again. And I just turned seventy-one. Is reveling, publicly or privately, in my "spectacular" writing another part of aging? A good part? A shameful part? And I figure I can't, even occasionally, even just under my breath, be a mean writer any more. Which is good. But should I delete all the above and get back to the original intent of this essay?  

This was going to be an essay about creative mortification. That moment when the high school English teacher says your story, this first piece of writing you can remember ever showing anyone, is boring. Or maybe he said dull.

An ancient meaning of mortification is to put something to death. These days creative mortification means critique brutal enough to crush a writer. Or critique, even if not terribly harsh, delivered at just that wrong moment in a writer's life. I didn't write again for a quarter of a century. And when I did, I wrote about that moment of humiliation in more than one essay. And here I am writing about it again.

When I did write again, the combination of my age and disability meant I was subject to whatever the opposite of creative mortification is—overly positive feedback delivered with cloying enthusiasm that anyone who's been disabled all their life recognizes for what it is. We can spot that creepy smile, those too bright eyes from way off.  But I figured out how to judge. I learned to know when I or my writing was too fragile to show to anyone yet. I found places and people who either supported my writing or didn't in real ways. Both made me happy.

I don't know why I've become a braggart of a writer. I try to put a good spin on it. Something about not caring what people think about me anymore. But it has to stop. It makes me uncomfortable. I want to go back to the deep satisfaction, smugness even, that comes from judging a piece of my writing as not complete crap.

I did send that short story out. The journal got back to me. It was a rejection. They have a set-up where, if you give permission, they'll include the raw feedback from the people who judge their submissions—they’re called “readers.” I said sure. And it was raw. And brutal. The main character was described as "annoying" and another character as even "worse." The story was called "absurd." "The ending had no sense." But I'm not sixteen anymore. I understood that these were the type of readers who thought it was cool to be mean. You can find them everywhere from the New York Times to small, online journals.

These days I'm mostly immune to mortification if it's coming from an outside source. And it made me laugh that the "feedback" arrived just in time to include in this essay. Perfect. And I paid attention when one of the readers complained that the "actual fantasy is minimal" and decided to resubmit not to a science fiction and fantasy journal but to a literary one. There's always the chance it will be deemed not literary enough what with the musk ox character not to mention a murdered sentient lichen. They might respond that they don't  accept "genre" writing, as they call it. But that narrowness is changing these days. I'll let you know what happens.

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