My Tender, Tender Writer’s Skin

By Mary Hannah Terzino

“I feel as if I am walking on eggshells with your writing,” one of my closest friends texted. She’d just read a flash piece I’d written. More precisely, she’d just read a flash piece I’d written in a retreat that included professional writers, where it was discussed through two iterations; revised; reviewed again separately by the two writer friends who read most of my work; revised; workshopped with my local writers’ group; revised again; submitted to a well-known journal; and published.

She’d read the piece in the online journal. Her first text had told me she enjoyed it. But wait! She had more to say. It featured a transgender teen who did not use gendered pronouns, and “it took me until halfway through to sort out who ‘they’ was.” She also offered that “the old guy is a bit too predictable, both in appearance and type.” I protested that I hadn’t asked for a critique. “I felt like I should offer some feedback,” she replied, before mentioning those eggshells. She was an English major, she reminded me. That was over 50 years ago, I reminded her.

I don’t know about you other folks out there writing about guys who are a bit too predictable, but the time I seek feedback is before I publish something. I prefer the non-randomness of asking for it, and I have a roster of trusted people I consult. I like feedback that serves a purpose: to help me make the essay or story better. If I’m lucky enough to have my current manuscript published and reviewed by actual critics, that control will go by the wayside, of course, but that’s a different kettle of fish.

I don’t ask my close nonwriting friends, as a general rule. Once something has been published, I use social media to tell my world, and if people click the link, that’s great. I get some nice comments, some hearts and thumbs up which may or may not signal that someone read the thing I wrote, and a modest uptick appears in my website analytics.

Readers, of course, have every right not to like my stuff, or to find things within a story or essay with which they take issue. If my friend were a stranger posting her comments on my Instagram or Facebook page, I might have a momentary, tiny fit of pique, but unsolicited negative comments from a dear friend feel icky in an entirely different way.

I confess I wanted her to walk on eggshells, not bound over them heedlessly to bridge the friend/critic divide. I wanted her to tell me she liked what she read or admired my writing, even if she didn’t completely mean it, and leave it at that, the way we tell friends their wedding dress was stunning even if it wasn’t, or the complicated dessert they labored over was delicious even if it was dry, or their kid’s performance in the middle school musical was delightful even if it hurt your ears a little. Because handing over your writing to a very good friend feels that personal. Is this lying? It shouldn’t be. By the time my close friends read my stuff, it’s been thoroughly vetted. And if telling me they like it is lying, that’s okay. This is my newborn. My close friends shouldn’t assume it’s their job to tell me the baby is ugly.

Even so, it was probably wrong to feel gleeful when I notified my dear friend that the piece she’d critiqued had been nominated for a “Best of” anthology. But my feelings are my feelings.

I exempt from this message dear friends who are writers. Many men, women, and people who use the pronoun “they” have bridged the friend/critic divide purposefully. Many are on my reader roster. They populate my writing groups, workshops, retreats, and in one case, a thrice-yearly dinner at Tosi’s restaurant. I adore them and am grateful for the fierceness of both their friendship and their occasionally eggshell-crushing critiques. As for the rest of my pals: Test my tender, tender skin before you stick the needle in.

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Mary Hannah Terzino has published her prose in The Forge Literary Magazine, Lumiere Review, Quartz Literary, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Pithead Chapel, and Hypertext Review, among other places. Her flash fiction story “Wall at the Back Garden” was a finalist in 2023 for the Larry Brown Short Story Prize, and another flash piece has been nominated for the 2024 Best Small Fictions anthology. Her essays on the writing life have appeared in Brevity’s Nonfiction Blog since 2021. In 2024 she is beginning a hybrid personal essay/fiction project focused on her hometown of La Porte, Indiana. Currently she lives overlooking the Kalamazoo River in Saugatuck, Michigan, where she sings in a community chorus and recently co-wrote the lyrics to a holiday choral piece which premiered in December at Saugatuck Center for the Arts.