Blurred Line

Over at BL Reviews, I recently handed out the first A+ I've given since I started the whole thing. The movie I gave it to was A History of Violence, a film which seems to have had something of a polarizing effect on people who watch it. Some, like me, think it's one of the most brilliant, incredible movies to come along in some time. Others think it's one of the worst movies they've ever seen.

Now, a part of me wants to suggest that the people who hate it might've been going to see it because they thought it'd be more of a thriller, but that would probably be the easy way out, because there are a vast number of highly intelligent movie watchers out there who've graded it quite lowly. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what the polarizing factor is in this case - usually its a political or moral position, and though this film does indeed have its position, they're never really stated overtly enough to be the sole reason between this polarization.

Anyhow, the reason I bring this up is because (thanks to a number of completely opposite reviews on a couple of albums and books I've picked up lately, in addition to the movie) I've been thinking about my own ego as an author. Personally, if something I wrote produced these love/hate opinions, I'd be ecstatic (not quite so much as if it were universally loved, but the chances of anyone doing that these days are pretty slim). Obviously, that means that people are reacting strongly to it and that, of course, is the point of producing art. In the long run, it doesn't matter whether people like it or not, only if people remember it, since it seems to take so much these days to move your average person out of apathy (at least, it seems that way for my age group, but maybe that's just because it's cool to be disaffected).

As far as reaction to my own writing goes, I'd say that it is pretty important to me, despite what I've just said. Maybe in the larger philosophical sense of things it doesn't matter much, but hey, I'm not in it for philosophy. I actually have a relatively fragile ego, in that I often need reassurance that what I'm doing is halfway decent. This isn't to say that I can't take criticism - I actually thrive on it - but if there's no positives there, I end up feeling a little bit hopeless. At the same time, outright positive reactions don't really do much for me either, unless they're coming from someone who I think knows their stuff.

How do you react to other people's opinions on your work?


Profile Editor. Writer. 9-5er. Lord of the Dance. Blurredline.com Apodis Publishing Fusion Fragment cterrill(at)blurredline.com Buy Goodbye, Darwin Amazon.com Amazon.ca Chapters.ca Barnes&Noble.com Read it free in PDF Format Buy Blurred Line Amazon.com Amazon.ca Chapters.ca Barnes&Noble.com Read it free in PDF Format The Short Stuff "Learning Magic From Mint" - published May 2007 in Atomjack "Between Eternities" - published October 2005 at Speculative.ca "Smoke and Mirrors" - published June 2005 in Byzarium Submissions Log Total Subs: 25 Acceptances: 3 Rejections: 17 Withdrawals: 3 Subs Out: 2 Quality Blogs Scalzi's Whatever Dave's Blogography Bookslut The Struggling Writer SF Signal the0phrastus Paperback Writer Scribe's Writing Desk Nathan Bransford Lyons Literary LLC The World in the Satin Bag Book In The Oven The Word Perhaps We Learned Something... Words, etc. Archives March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 Et Cetera Cavan @ Last.fm Cavan @ LibraryThing Feeds Atom Feed RSS Feed	Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - On Love/Hate and Approval Over at BL Reviews, I recently handed out the first A+ I've given since I started the whole thing. The movie I gave it to was A History of Violence, a film which seems to have had something of a polarizing effect on people who watch it. Some, like me, think it's one of the most brilliant, incredible movies to come along in some time. Others think it's one of the worst movies they've ever seen. Now, a part of me wants to suggest that the people who hate it might've been going to see it because they thought it'd be more of a thriller, but that would probably be the easy way out, because there are a vast number of highly intelligent movie watchers out there who've graded it quite lowly. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what the polarizing factor is in this case - usually its a political or moral position, and though this film does indeed have its position, they're never really stated overtly enough to be the sole reason between this polarization. Anyhow, the reason I bring this up is because (thanks to a number of completely opposite reviews on a couple of albums and books I've picked up lately, in addition to the movie) I've been thinking about my own ego as an author. Personally, if something I wrote produced these love/hate opinions, I'd be ecstatic (not quite so much as if it were universally loved, but the chances of anyone doing that these days are pretty slim). Obviously, that means that people are reacting strongly to it and that, of course, is the point of producing art. In the long run, it doesn't matter whether people like it or not, only if people remember it, since it seems to take so much these days to move your average person out of apathy (at least, it seems that way for my age group, but maybe that's just because it's cool to be disaffected). As far as reaction to my own writing goes, I'd say that it is pretty important to me, despite what I've just said. Maybe in the larger philosophical sense of things it doesn't matter much, but hey, I'm not in it for philosophy. I actually have a relatively fragile ego, in that I often need reassurance that what I'm doing is halfway decent. This isn't to say that I can't take criticism - I actually thrive on it - but if there's no positives there, I end up feeling a little bit hopeless. At the same time, outright positive reactions don't really do much for me either, unless they're coming from someone who I think knows their stuff. How do you react to other people's opinions on your work? Cavan blogged at 4:49 PM \| 3 comments	Progress Zilch! 0/0 Listening A.J. Croce - "Maybe I'm Amazed" My Music Reading Bright Lights, Big City - Jay McInerney My Library Watching Black Book: B Sweet and Lowdown: C Breakfast on Pluto: B Wishlist Bridge of Sighs - Richard Russo Rachael Yamagata - Elephants...Teeth Sinking Into Heart