Taking Criticism

 

Escaping Criticism by Pere Borrel del Caso

 

How do you handle criticism?

That might be a bit of a broad question. I might depend who’s giving the criticism and how sympathetically it’s delivered. But imagine this scene: you’ve sent the manuscript you’ve been working on for months to someone you respect. They kindly but insistently point out all the things that don’t work. What do you do?

1 throw the comments to the floor (or the equivalent with an email) and storm off in anger;

2 believe the remarks and decide the whole piece of writing is rubbish, as is your decision to write anything at all;

3 take some time to reflect on the comments and then consider them calmly.

Of course it should be 3, we all know that. But let’s admit, that’s easier said than done. When we’ve spent weeks polishing a poem or a piece of prose, and we think it’s really good, we hope that the response is going to be, ‘wow, that’s amazing’. Not, ‘good premise, but x doesn’t really work and have you thought about developing y?’

Or is that just me?

It’s difficult to accept that our work may not be as good as we hoped. But that’s why we send it out, isn’t it? To find out how someone else sees it. Because we can be too close; we know the thought processes that have gone into the work. We need someone to look at it for the first time. If an action confuses them, maybe it needs clarifying. If a sentence jars for them, maybe it needs tweaking. If a character seems superfluous, maybe that character need re-working, or even cutting. However painful that is.

The view of a knowledgeable outsider is important. But however skilled a writer or editor, they did not write your piece. Which is why I found this quotation so helpful.

Readers can tell us what doesn’t work for them and we need to listen. Especially if several readers make the same comment. Whatever we’re writing, we need it to be coherent and powerful. But suggestions about how best to solve the issue, they will be personal. Not necessarily helpful. And as the author, we know the characters and settings best. We should be best placed to work out how to improve something that isn’t working.

So take the criticism and find your own solution.

And remember 

 If we can handle criticism well, we can learn from it, and our writing can improve.