I've been feeling a bit under the weather. But I did have an article appear online recently that I thought might interest some of the readers of this blog. It's a little reflective piece on how to handle criticism. We've all had difficult feedback (and we'll all have plenty more!), and I hope the ideas in the article are helpful to someone somewhere. If you have other suggestions about what's helped you in this area, please do share in a comment on this post if you have a moment.
I'm excited to announce a new zine project from Teeny Tiny Press called Thank You . Using the classic Teeny Tiny format of an eight-page, single-sheet zine, Thank You collects a series of thank you notes in the form of poems and very short prose. Issue one includes work (in alphabetical order!) from Maura Alia Badji, X.P. Callahan, Del Ray Cross, Laura-Marie River Victor Nopales, BT Shaw, Eileen Tabios, and Mandy Zeller. To launch this zine, I'm doing a month-long fundraising drive (Aug 9-Sept 10) for Treehouse, a Seattle-based organization that helps kids and young adults in foster care. This is part of a larger back to school fundraising drive from Treehouse. They help kids with clothes, school supplies, books, toys, and much more. If you want a copy of the zine, donate an amount of your choice to Treehouse via https://engage.treehouseforkids.org/teenytinypress , and send me an email or instagram message with your mailing address. Then I'll send you the zine! Thank
Comments
Also, some people just aren't open to change, and a good example is the lady I mentioned earlier who often says, "Oh, I don't want to write it that way because..." There's not much you can do in this situation, but sometimes, I wonder why I should bother making suggestions if she's just going to reject them outright, but like the gambler who keeps feeding coins into the slot machine at a casino, I'm occasionally rewarded when she takes one of my suggestions to heart. That's what keeps me going.