Dumaguete Days, Part Four

One of the very first lessons I’ve learned as a writer is that to be one is to open oneself to criticism. When one does not learn to accept it objectively he or she has no business being a writer. I’ve had my fair share of criticism through the years, and my experience with the Writers Bloc (which counts some of the bitchier and more opinionated playwrights around as its members) has toughened me up considerably. Much as I accept all kinds of criticism and weigh them one by one, there had been very few times I had questioned the way critical comments were given.

One of those times happened during the final week of the workshop. There was one very opinionated panelist that week who was so unusually bitchy that it startled me and my co-fellows. We had no problem with what he said, but we felt that the extremely bitchy way he had said them was uncalled for. He had criticized one story to the point the writer almost reacted violently, and he had criticized a particular poem so badly that that fellow trembled throughout, barely able to speak. The word constructive was clearly not a part of his vocabulary. Maybe if Ma’am Edith was there (my batch was the only one she didn’t personally oversee; she was in Iowa that time), things would have been a little different. We really felt this panelist brought out the worst in us.

How bad? One co-fellow even drew an eject button on one of the pages of her folio of manuscripts and repeatedly pressed it, imagining the panelist being thrown from his chair. Another would frequently hum the theme from Psycho or make Norman Bates-like slashing gestures. Another would mockingly crouch and cover her ears and rock her body back and forth. And there were times I would daydream that my co-fellows and I were assassins, wielding all kinds of weapons, targeting the panelist. For some reason I always ended up with a bow and arrow.

We must have looked so pissed off for most of that week, for that panelist remarked one time that we all looked so serious. Another panelist, who's much gentler and much more intelligent, was more observant. He said that we seemed to be in a murderous mood. If he only knew.