An Artistic Ratio: Create More Than You Critique
A note to fiction writers and other artists on what to prioritize
Recently I was emailing back and forth with my internet acquaintance and local Substack legend A.A. Kostas and asking for his thoughts on writing in multiple genres, which, if you subscribe to the man, he does very well. In fact, he has a novel and I believe a poetry book coming out in the coming year! Toward the end of our exchange, he mentioned something important for writers and other artists to keep in mind, which is basically this: Create more than you critique.
I’ll add some context. I’ve been writing fiction since elementary school and always wanted to do this, in some capacity, with the rest of my life. If you asked my honest answer to what I hoped my vocation would be as a high school and college student, it was “a novelist.” Still is. Post-college, however, my writing grew to include essays, reviews, blogs, and even reporting. Basically any opportunity that came along that involved writing, I took. For a season, this was all great, because I was writing and oftentimes getting paid for it, all the while still picking away at short stories and novels. Over the last few months, though, I’ve started to wrestle with the writing “ratio” between so-called creative writing and cultural criticism, and slightly worry that my the “critical” part of my brain has been beating out the “creative” part of it.
This is a pretty big topic with a lot of nuance and case-by-case basis, so I don’t want to present some all-encompassing thesis about how every writer needs to operate, because of course not every writer is a fiction writer. Many are strictly cultural critics, or investigative journalists, or academic writers, or marketers/copywriters. For those writers whose first love was fiction, though, or perhaps poetry or even creative nonfiction, maybe this tension feels a little more substantial. You might worry that you were once a fiction writer or poet who occasionally offered up commentary and criticism (maybe because it was more lucrative or you found it easier to get a foot in the door that way) but are now in danger of becoming the opposite: a critic who only occasionally generates creative work.
But what do I mean by “creative”? Can’t a critical book review be “creative”? In a sense, yes, because the writer needs to manage creative and interesting turns of phrases to make the piece of criticism interesting to read. But ultimately, in this scenario, the writer is critiquing the art, not making it. The writer is judge, arbiter, pontificating and measuring the worth of the art. The writer is responding to a work of artistic creation via op-ed. Another way to critique a novel or short story is to actually write your own novel or short story in response!
Perhaps the entire concept of “creative writing” has been unnecessarily reduced to poetry, fiction, and the personal essay. Creativity is involved in all sorts of writing, from newspaper profiles to poems. Still, though, a short story is a very different type of writing than an opinion piece. A lifetime journalist probably isn’t going to switch over and write a beautiful novel on the first try. I’m reminded of that iconic scene in the movie Civil War in which Jesse Plemons’ character says, “Well, what kind of American are you?” Switch out “American” for “writer.” What kind of writer are you?
Perhaps, then, my dilemma is a bit more stark and calls for a basic choice: do I want to be an artist or simply opine about the arts? Do I want to write fiction or write opinion pieces about the current state of literature? You can easily and rightly say that you can do both of these things at the same time, that categorizing creativity and criticism is somewhat of a false dichotomy. I also believe, though, largely through my own experience, that fiction writing and criticism exercise very different parts of the brain, and that writing a story demands much different mental apparatus than writing a book review or composing a work of argumentative rhetoric. I have found that writing both fiction and nonfiction has helped me become a better writer at the sentence level, but writing opinion pieces hasn’t necessarily helped me become a better storyteller. I think personal essays and short stories have much in common with each other, but cultural criticism and fiction are pretty different, both in substance and function.
My conclusion to this problem is pretty simple, and I direct it to other fiction writers/poets/ traditional “creative writers” for their reflection (since, alas, this very piece of writing is a work of opinion): Choose a primary genre to write in, read voraciously in that genre, and treat criticism as a subsidiary byproduct of your central craft. For me, this means that I’m a fiction writer who also writes essays on culture, literature, and faith/Christian spiritual formation. Hopefully, the criticism and scholarly work enhances my appreciation of fiction itself. Overall, though, I should mainly practice fiction and treat criticism essentially as a tributary to that endeavor. There isn’t a rule to this, of course, and maybe I’m making it too cut and dry. I guess what I’m saying is that if you are an artist, be an artist! If you write fiction, write fiction and read lots of it, too. This will, of course, lead you to make critical evaluations and judgements of the works in your field, which will most likely lead you to write some cultural and literary criticism on the side. Overall, though, you should strive to create good work and reserve a smaller percentage of your life to criticizing what’s already out there. Create more than you critique!
PUBLICATION ALERT: My new book, What the Tree Saw: Short Fictions, IS NOW AVAILABLE!
Buy from your favorite online book vendor:
This is well said, and I see your point. That said, I don't think of it in quite the same way. I write fiction and also personal essays and also academic writing. I find I have to embrace a seasonal model. There are seasons for fiction and their are seasons for nonfiction. Just like there are seasons where I focus on learning/studying and seasons where I focus on producing. I find this helpful, as it allows me to experience the whole process as a rhythm rather than a strict an inflexible rule. Of course, sometimes htis model feels very slow, and I worry I'm not producing enough in one area or another. Anyway, I don't think you were suggesting it has to be one way or the other. I'm just a framework I've also found helpful.
Thank you for sharing!