Making Judgments on Fiction: A Chronicle for Writers

We all start out with judgments: on others, on ourselves, and, for this discussion, on writing. It can be said that writing is all about making choices, but it is not about making judgments. All writers make the judgment to quit at one point or another-including me. So in the spirit of that this article will focus on defeating the judgment of fiction, and explaining why it does nothing to help the writer.

The first 100 words is always the hardest. We want to make a judgment on it. A short story or novel can be shelved for the simple fact we can't get past these initial words. We find that, once we write out the beginning, half the pressure is off. But there is still the judgmental side, that negative artist deep inside, and we will struggle with it for the rest of the story-not to mention future stories.

Is there a cure? The truth is that making judgments is part of our chemistry. We are so used to making choices, and deciding whether something is good or bad, that we forget the initial desire to write the story out. Fiction will be work sometimes, but a joy can be found if we let go of all the petty criticisms. There is no point in judging it in the beginning, in the middle, and in the end, because there is nothing positive in doing this. The fiction piece needs to be written. Perhaps we are not ready for the story, yet that can be an excuse.

The short story is easy compared to the novel-not in terms of difficulty, but in getting past the judgments. A short story can be a few thousands words; a novel a hundred thousand or more. We may have nothing to lose in writing a short story; the novel will take a considerable amount of time no matter how fast we are. To avoid making the judgment on the novel, we need to think of it as several interconnected short stories. All stories have this object called a Chinese boxes-stories told within stories. If we concentrate on the page at hand, we will forget all those negative thoughts. Can we finish the novel? Is it going to be good? These questions have to wait another day. We need to move forward.

And in doing all of this we find that judgments are part of our nature. I make judgments on fiction all the time; the problem is what I think is good often isn't and what I think is bad can be called my best work. Remember that the next time you decide to quit a short story or novel because of your negative judgment on it.