Receiving criticism

As you’ve probably learned by now if you’ve shown your writing to anyone other than your mom—assuming your mom thinks everything you do is awesome; otherwise, you’ve probably had very writerly beginnings!—not everyone will like everything about it. Being a sensible human being, you know that it’s very unlikely for anyone to write something that’s 100% good or 100% awful—except when it’s your own work. Then either we’re on cloud nine after writing a scene that’s near and dear to our hearts, or we’re bawling our eyes out because everything is terrible and there’s no hope of ever making it better.

Other people can help clarify for us the quality of our work before we send it to agents or editors. But they can also sabotage us for their own motives. Even more likely, they’re simply human, and their tastes and skills are as imperfect as ours. So in order to parse the advice we get on our writing, we need to keep a few things in mind.

Is the advice solicited? If the advice comes from out of the blue, whether it’s praise or disdain, take it with a grain of salt, maybe a whole bucket of salt. Someone who’s praising your work may not be a discerning reader or might be accustomed to flattering people to keep the peace. Someone who says your writing is awful is probably responding to their own issues rather than what’s on the page. Either way, steer clear.

Consider the source. When you ask someone to read your work, they should have your best interests as a writer in mind. In other words, if Aunt Mildred thinks art is a waste of time and you really should have gone into finance, she probably wants what she thinks is best for you, but you’re not on the same page about what you want. But if Aunt Irma is a voracious reader in your genre and doesn’t mind telling you the brutal truth if you have spinach in your teeth, she’s a better critic who can give you solid advice. Of course, if Aunt Marge is a fellow writer with published books and positive reviews—and if she doesn’t hate your guts—she may be your best bet.

Consider the nature of the advice. The most important question is, does this advice help or hinder my work? As I’ve mentioned before, vague advice, especially with the subtext that you should stop writing, isn’t helpful and can usually be ignored.

Pretend you’re talking about someone else’s book. This is often easier said than done, but an easy, helpful tool is time. Wait a month or two between writing something and discussing it with someone else (they can spend part of that time reading it, so this isn’t as strange as it might sound). After you've waited, the details are less sharp in your memory, and there’s a more objective distance that will take away the sting of anything negative your reader has to say. But sometimes, even when the advice is neither vague nor mean-spirited, it’s hard to hear detailed feedback about the ways in which your book or story or screenplay isn’t working—which is why you should...

Wait before you make a decision. The good thing about reader feedback is that it’s totally up to you whether or not to use it—or how much of it to use. And you don’t have to decide all at once. Hopefully you’ve taken good notes on your reader’s comments if they didn’t provide them in writing. Take out your notes or correspondence and, for each note, ask yourself what you want to do with it. Some suggestions should be used in their entirety, others completely ignored, but many have some merit but aren't quite what you want. A common occurrence is for a reader to notice a problem with a scene that isn’t working right and provide a suggestion that’s well-intentioned but not the best solution. This gives you the opportunity to study that scene and provide your own solution, which is probably stronger if you’ve managed to separate your ego sufficiently from the work.

It is, after all, ultimately your writing. You have the largest stake in making it work.