If you write for yourself, your family or your friends, stop reading. You won’t ever need to get a thick skin to protect yourself from criticism. Everyone will gush over your work, they’ll read it cover to cover, and you’ll feel pretty good about yourself.
Once you open your work up to strangers, however, look out. And if you write for a business or a client, be prepared to be dragged across hot burning coals and have every single word you write be stomped into the dirt.
O.K., so it’s not that bad. But if you want to sell your writing or make your writing better, you have to learn how to deal with criticism.
Probably the most important and obvious tip I can give is to realize criticism is not about who you are as a person or your ability as a writer. It’s always about the writing, which is not you. If someone is coming down hard on you, ignore them. The kinds of comments that are directed at you personally aren’t constructive, and you probably shouldn’t get feedback from this person anyway, since it’s not helping you.
That’s a lot easier said than done. Here are some tips to help you get to that point where you realize it’s not personal.
- Get feedback from someone you know and whose opinion you trust. They’ll be the most likely to give you good feedback and make you feel good at the same time.
- Get feedback often. The more you expose yourself to criticism, the easier it is to take it. Once you get over that initial fear of showing someone your work, it’s semi-smooth sailing.
- Write with passion and from the heart. Revise and take other people’s notes with your head. The less you allow your personal feelings into the editorial process, the better.
- Realize it’s all about making you a better writer. If someone is picking apart everything in your latest story, remember that you can still learn something from it, regardless of whether or not you agree with it.
- Remember, you don’t have to take every piece of criticism. You can disagree with what someone says. Just make sure it’s because it’s the right thing to do, and not because your heart is telling you to not take criticism.
How have you dealt with criticism in the past?
I was in a critique group with three other writers several years ago before any of us was published. We read and critique one chapter from each of the others’ works in progress each week.
Our rule-of-thumb was this: If one person comments on something, review it and see if you agree. If two people comment on the same thing, think seriously about changing it. And if all three mention the same problem, you know it really needs to be changed.
This worked well because sometimes one critiquer saw something that others missed, but often it was just a subjective personal opinion. However, if two or three people saw the same problem, you can figure that many readers will have a similar problem.
Left by Lillie Ammann on April 25th, 2007