Writing advice is often bad, and from other writers, probably worthless. The most commonplace tropes such as “avoid adverbs” are inane, akin to telling a painter that they can use only a limited color palette. What’s wrong with this? Eh. Too much purple.

Still there is a value to be gleaned from advice. As authors we seek, not advice, but valid criticism. It is not the suggested improvements themselves, but the locus of the criticism, the point where it is aimed, that is often spot on. Well, something in that passage isn’t working, regardless of their well-intended but misguided attempt to solve the problem for us. And not because another writer isn’t talented enough to solve the problem, but because they stand too distant from it, haven’t immersed themselves inside the architecture to give it the proper treatment needed. Sometimes the answer really is a purple adverb. But only the author can judge.

And it’s hard to discern. Because judging isn’t reserved for the author alone. We may have crafted a singular piece of beauty, fashioned through hard work, trial and error, a complete world, an architecture that holds together remarkably well no matter how we spin it, only to discover when we show our new world to others, the audience can’t see it and judges it unremarkable. Well, is that true? Are they unable to see it because we authors failed to put what is inside our heads down on paper with enough sufficient detail or care for our craft? Or have we set the challenge bar too high, forcing a new perspective on an audience lacking the sophistication to see it?

The later brings about charges of snobbery, arrogance, martyrdom, the myth of the lonely tortured genius. Yet it does not necessarily come from a place of egoism or defensiveness. There are plenty of examples in history: Kafka, Thomas Hardy, etc. where the writer is indeed ahead of the times. The critics caught up, eventually. But that’s no solace for the author. Above all, we cannot rest content on that assumption. So we take the criticism to heart, not the exact form, but the locus, and set ourselves back to work, reworking, rewriting. So long as we never concede to abandon the work, there is no failure.

This is the inherent danger of too much criticism, one that denies the viability of most artistic endeavors. There are, after all, deep-rooted differences in the way critics and authors treat the value and purpose of writing. A deep cavernous prose may come across as stuffy and pompous if the underlying ideas are superficial and shallow. Sometimes it is better to go with “a dark and stormy night” as opposed to “a dwindling luminesce punctuated by brief flashes of electrostatic discharge.” Whereas I am unbothered by the author’s choice, the critic is apoplectic.

Early on and rather quickly, a subjective value judgment forms, perhaps no more than three pages in before a reader decides to press on or abandon reading entirely. There is a pain/pleasure calculus and our pain calculus has soared in the era of mindless distractions, streaming, social media. That’s not a lot of time to set the hook or the snare. But if we succeed, a pact is made. Ok, I like this, and want to see where we are heading. I’ll even, like any good friend, ignore some of your faults and warts because I like you book and will give you every opportunity to succeed in pleasing me. If we speak in the language of economics, this value judgment comes down to opportunity cost. For most critics, the opportunity cost is set very low, a couple of hours or perhaps a few days at most. The author’s opportunity cost, by contrast, is incalculable. The loss includes months, years, perhaps a lifetime of leisure, love, enjoyment, passion, travel, etc. all these sacrificed in the pain of writing, on the altar of the muse.

This is what we must guard against, that single painful disappointment whenever our art reaches the critical mass light. We must not fool ourselves in assuming this debt can be repaid. Our opportunity cost can never be recovered. It is irretrievably lost. The praise we receive from an audience, a million times over, can never fill that void inside us. It is madness to try. And so we must steel ourselves, honor the muse, she is the one and the only one we need to impress. And impressed she will be, so long as we serve her willingly, to live the creative life fully and not to see the void within us as a vacuum, but for what it truly is, a sprawling bubbling cauldron of infinite possibilities.