Critique the Writing, Not the Writer

I've heard the phrase "critique the writing, not the writer" before, and I think it's great advice. Recently, I received feedback that straddled that line, albeit (I believe) unintentionally. My second novel is a second chance romance about a woman who had put her life on hold when her mother was dying of cancer, and has now returned home after finishing college to finalize her mother's estate. She runs into her high school sweetheart, who has been keeping a pretty big secret from her.

Anyway, in one of the first scenes between the woman and her ex, she remembers going for long car rides on backroads and then watching the sunset over the water. This is a direct experience I had growing up in a relatively rural area. A lot of my writing pulls from my own experiences, and this was something I did often as a teen. Truthfully, there wasn't a lot to do where I come from and as it already took about a half hour to get anywhere, driving around became a favorite past time.

The feedback I received was that this was "absurdly innocent" and then I was asked if this was typical of the genre. I realize not everyone grew up in a rural area, and that perhaps it does have an innocent vibe, but my issue isn't with "innocent" it's with "absurdly." My childhood, according to this person, was "absurd." 

Not even just my childhood as I have friends who still live in the area. With gas prices on the rise, I'm not sure that driving around with no destination is as popular as it was when we were growing up, but there's still plenty of backroads to take if someone wanted to drive the long way home. I have plans to teach my daughter to drive down there because A) there's way less traffic and terrible drivers just for the fact that there are less people, and B) it's a good way to learn how to keep control of the car on winding roads with tight curves.

Obviously, I don't think this person knows my history or anything about where I grew up, but as my husband pointed out, has this person never in their life heard a country song? Like, oh I don't know, "Take Me Home, Country Roads" by John Denver?

Anyway, all this to say, it's important to be mindful about how we approach critiques of each other's writing. What may seem a little too innocent to one person may actually be based on a real life experience for another. In one of the writing communities I'm in, someone shared that their memoir was considered too unrealistic, even though it actually happened to them! Sure, some things may sound incredibly far fetched, and perhaps in those cases, the critique could be to make sure to include enough context to make it more believable. But I feel like we need to take a step back and consider whether our own biases are coloring our interpretation of a story.