“It’s easy to attack and destroy an act of creation. It’s a lot more difficult to perform one.”
—CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Writers are exquisitely sensitive creatures, tuned in to the tiniest shifts in the environment around them and the widest spectrum of emotion. Writers are people with The Big Array of antennae—open to and thin-skinned against the world and its weightiness. Negativity—especially the doubt, fear, and self-loathing that writers feel after receiving criticism—sinks and pulls with a powerful gravity. In order to handle the feedback that will make you a better writer (and toughen your skin along the way), it’s helpful to hold a couple of things in mind when criticism rolls in. Specifically, the answers to the following questions:
Keep the answers to these questions near, as a strong reminder that there’s a reason to your writing rhythms, that you can’t be thrown off so easily by a little feedback or personal opinion, and that you are even less swayed or shaken by input sent with a nasty intention.
Equally important is that you cultivate an attitude of “take nothing personally.” Even when criticism is aimed at you, choose to see it as the problem of the person who criticized. Learn to separate feedback about your work from your worth and talent; critique delivered in the spirit of improvement is worth receiving, and you may just need to wait until you’re ready to use it.
Also keep in mind whether you want to stay where you are or whether you would like to grow in new ways. Constructive criticism often cultivates us, nourishing our roots and encouraging us to bloom in ways we didn’t think possible.
At some point in the life of your writing practice, when you seek reasonable, thoughtful critique, criticism’s cutting jaws will come after you instead. So let me help you make an important distinction: Criticism is personal opinion that has little or nothing to do with you. Critique is a well-reasoned, astute approach designed to help you improve your work. It is work-centered, not personal. If someone says, “I don’t like the way you write,” or “What you’ve written is stupid and pointless,” that’s criticism; it’s subjective personal opinion. My answer to that sort of feedback is: “You can’t please all the people all the time.” Critique, on the other hand, might sound like this: “When you write in the passive voice, it slows down your sentences.” Or “I feel that too many adjectives hamper your action.” Or even “I’m having a difficult time connecting with your character.”
Criticism takes issue with you or your style or subject in an unhelpful way; critique offers you strategies for improvement. Big difference. In fact, improvement is the key to helpful critique. Any feedback that is designed to strengthen your writing is a good thing. Any criticism that simply points out what the reviewer doesn’t like without including any tips for fixing it can be put aside.
No writer grows without feedback and change. It’s the nature of the craft that you wear creative blinders when you write: At times, you can only see as far as the next sentence. Feedback is crucial to making sure the rough vision in your mind unspools for the reader in a way that successfully translates your ideas and takes the reader on a clear journey. After all, you want to be read and understood. To fully embrace feedback, you may have to release any attachment to being “perfect on demand.”
Now, I’m not saying that receiving strategies for improvement will necessarily feel great. For one thing, if you thought you were done working on a piece, or if you were especially attached to something that others are suggesting you change, that kind of advice can hit a sore spot inside you. This is where you need to return to your vision, your Writer’s Code, and your goals for your long-term writing practice. Remember that critique is designed to improve the work, not comment upon your talent or insult you personally.
Is your goal to write and produce quality material that reflects who you are and finds you an audience? Is your goal to produce material quickly to get it published as fast as possible? Neither answer is right or wrong, but your specific goal will determine how and when you seek critique, and I highly recommend you do. The trick is to find trustworthy people who can give you help without attacking, nitpicking, or insulting you. Finding a good critique partner or group is much like finding a therapist or a church—the individual or group has to fit right and has to offer that exquisite balance of being able to push you out of your comfort zone and still hold the rope for you as you leap.
If you’re wondering how and where to find a critique group, there are two main ways to go about this: online and in person.
The Internet opens you to a wider variety and a further reach because you can join writing and critique groups with members from all around the world, unconstrained by physical geography. Rather than point you toward generic critique groups, I take a page (literally) from author Becky Levine’s book, The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide. She recommends you join the organization most closely linked to the genre or style you write in. Some suggestions of hers include:
Nearly every state has an arts council or alliance website that provides links for writers of every conceivable genre.
Another possibility is to post a request to start a critique group at your local library, a university, a bookstore, a café, and even your workplace.
All you really need are like-minded people with an eye for detail. Levine’s book offers a number of wonderful strategies for how to approach critiquing.
Sometimes you’ll get more critique than you know what to do with, and the amount of work waiting for you can threaten to crush your spirits. In that case, it’s best to ask yourself what, specifically, you are ready to work on and what you want to work on, and focus on only the feedback that will help you accomplish it. Put the rest to the side.
Give yourself some distance from the work, too, and then come back and reread the feedback. Some of the most outrageous and painful critique I ever received, especially while completing my MFA program, I later discovered wasn’t awful at all when I put it down and came back to it. When my stories were freshly written, all critique was too much. Anything from “I’m having trouble understanding why your character made this choice,” to “Are you sure that’s the right word?” was enough to get my emotional hackles up. I had to walk away. Walking away is preferable to letting your spirits sink because your work is too raw.
On that note, and I speak to this in chapter seventeen, “Stave Off Sabotage,” be honest with yourself about why you’re seeking critique. If you put your work out too soon, hoping to hear that it’s “brilliant” or that you “shouldn’t change a thing,” there is a good chance you’ll be disappointed. Learn to recognize your writing rhythms. Consider how long you might need between penning a fresh manuscript and freely floating it to someone for suggestions without wanting to curl up in a fetal ball afterwards. Is it a week? Is it a month? Is it more? Don’t let the urgency to publish sabotage your progress.
One way to circumvent the pain of critique is to get ahead of the ball and ask for specifics when you put your work out there. Create a list of questions that will help facilitate a healthy revision. I usually ask my reader specific questions such as:
This is just a starter kit of questions, but it gives you an idea. You may have a good sense of the weak areas in your story, and you should ask your readers if they see these weaknesses. I always recommend putting these questions at the end of the manuscript, however, so that you don’t bias your readers.
Also, I’ve found that in composing this list of questions you’ll realize you have a greater sense of what needs work than you may have had previously. And you’ll empower yourself rather than feeling at the mercy of your reviewers. It’s also helpful to your readers, who can then put some real care and thought into these specific areas if they aren’t sure what you’re looking for.
When you’ve been the recipient of painful criticism or overwhelming critique, your mind is not likely to be the most trustworthy neighborhood to hang out in. In that state, you can’t be expected to remember all the good things you know to be true about yourself and your writing. I am a big fan of pasting these reminders in easy-to-find locations. Whether you have quotes, acceptance letters, inspiration, or just reminders, they will help to keep your spirits up.
For instance, on my wall is a handwritten sign I made that says:
Grumpy?
I could easily swap out “Grumpy?” for “Feeling Criticized?” We all need rituals to coax our wounded animal out of the corner. And the wisdom of the survivors who’ve gone ahead of us can be immensely reassuring in a bumpy patch. In addition to my sign, I’ve also posted quotes from my favorite authors and spiritual teachers, acceptance e-mails, and collages about writing that I’ve made. One of my favorite quotes is: “Do no harm, but take no shit.”
Despite all of my tips, you may still find yourself in the path of a wave of criticism so powerful that it knocks aside your logical mind, pushes your strategies just out of reach, and makes you feel awful. It may bust down your protective doorways, kick aside your sentinels, and shove you out on the window ledge, dragging with it an entire chorus of negative voices. Believe me, I’ve been there. One of my writing buddies called this state of being “the ledge”—as in, I went to such a dark place that she felt as though she were on the ground floor of a building talking me off the ledge far above. And indeed, at the time, I felt so bleak, so confused, so fraudulent because I was failing to see what others saw and struggling to create something that pleased others that my muse was threatening to jump from that ledge and leave me forever.
Perhaps this is a rite of passage all writers need to experience. Because if you’ve never heard these lying, foul voices, you can’t fully appreciate just how wrong they are and how worthy you and your writing really are. I just hope you don’t have to linger there.
Your Creative Support Team is crucial during these “on the ledge” times, particularly if your team includes at least one person who’s been there before. But if not, I’ve discovered several other powerful antidotes to try.
In the darkest of my ledge-standing days, I have always taken great comfort in music, poetry, visual art, and sometimes even just arts and crafts. The muse will gladly turn tides if you give her a new avenue. Sometimes the dark feelings are a sign that you need a break. Writing is nothing if not powerfully emotional, able to stir up deep corners of your psyche, and it is intricately woven into many writers’ senses of identity, purpose, and value. When it isn’t working or it feels wrong, turning your energies elsewhere can be a powerful antidote.
When I get too close to the ledge, I make beaded jewelry. It proves to be a deeply satisfying process. For one thing, in just a few minutes, I can make something beautiful without asking for or receiving critique, or revising. I know lots of writers who also craft to distract themselves and just as many who find that the cure for their dark emotions is to pop in a movie, mosh around their living room, or read someone else’s work.
If reading someone else’s writing doesn’t reinforce your negative feelings, you might find that it frees up your own stuck places. Reading can remind you why you write, what you love about words and stories; it also tunes your inner ear to the poetry and power of language, plants images in your unconscious, and essentially feeds the writer tank inside you. I believe that all good writers must read. Reading is an aerobics class for your writer mind. I’m especially a fan of reading a genre or form I don’t write in. I love to read memoir and poetry, two forms I rarely write, because they still provide the keen ecstasy of language but also push me out of the tar pit of my stuck fiction writer’s mind.
Just because the goal is to eliminate your feelings of discouragement and doubt doesn’t mean you have to feel only happiness and light along the way. There’s nothing like a good old-fashioned raging or sorrowful rant that no one but you will ever see. Write it out, and write yourself down off the ledge. If you do this, I highly recommend you do it with pen and paper—there’s just something tactile and satisfying about jabbing a pen into the page, denting its surface with your feelings, the ink like blood being let from the harsh words.
Remember chapter seven, “Seek to Serve”? Here’s a great place to exercise that intention in a way that can help you at the same time. As difficult as it is to lick your own wounds, if you can find a way to turn around and help someone else or offer wisdom or support, you may find that your own pain recedes. I believe that kind acts and goodness dissolve pain. At the very least, record what you’re going through in a journal so that it can be of use to others later, perhaps as a personal essay or a blog post.
Sometimes negative feelings just get stuck in your body. You receive a piece of criticism—maybe someone doesn’t like your style, reviews your book negatively on Amazon, or talks badly about you to another writer. The feelings conjured by this criticism might sit like heavy stones in your gut, pressing in against your lungs and making it tough to take a deep breath. You might feel tired or weighty, as though you’re suddenly wearing three of those protective lead jackets you have to wear to get your dental x-rays.
Your feelings derive from and affect your body. So when you find yourself looking down over the black abyss, don’t just sit there. Move your body. Some form of exercise—almost anything, really—can make all the difference.
Don’t just take my advice, though. All available research, including a study done by Norwegian researchers in 2013, states that even moderate physical exercise shows quantifiable results for improving mood, ranging from anxiety to depression.
As author Jonathan Fields puts it in an article for Fast Company, “For artists, entrepreneurs, and any other driven creators, exercise is a powerful tool in the quest to help transform the persistent uncertainty, fear, and anxiety that accompanies the quest to create from a source of suffering into something less toxic, then potentially even into fuel.”
On the other end of criticism comes praise, and who doesn’t like to hear how wonderful, talented, compelling, interesting, smart, valid, or poetic their writing is? Praise comes in like a sweet scent and leaves you feeling lifted, euphoric, even purposeful. But as Anne Bradstreet writes in her poem “Meditations Divine and Moral,” “Sweet words are like honey, a little may refresh, but too much gluts the stomach.”
To a writer, praise, just like any potentially addictive substance, is a dangerous virtue that must be watched closely and kept in check. Why shouldn’t you just revel in these moments of pleasure when someone bestows value or approval upon you? You should appreciate praise the same way you appreciate your nose, hair, teeth, or other attributes you were born with; that is, praise is largely out of your control. For the writer, praise does not a writing practice make. A writing practice is deepened and fulfilled when you acknowledge your own value and worth.
Once you’ve had that hit of praise, it’s very easy to seek it out, to depend on it as you proceed with your creative projects. It can become so necessary that any critique feels hollow and harsh, pushing you away from doing necessary work and instead toward finding flattery. And let me reassure you, if it’s flattery you seek, someone will always be there to provide it, but it doesn’t mean it’s for your benefit.
You have to learn to praise yourself, to discover and hone your own strengths. That comes with practice. Eventually you’ll know what comes naturally to you, what you stumble over, and you’ll teach yourself to seek the feedback that will shore up your weak parts and to acknowledge yourself for what you’ve done well. Yes, that comes with time, but the purpose of a writing practice is not to start out an expert or a master but to become better and make new discoveries along the way.
Interestingly I’ve noticed that when people do their truest, most authentic work, the praise has a way of flowing in.
Pick a recent criticism you’ve received. Write a rant. Really go for it. No one ever needs to see this, so there’s no need for censorship or careful language. Let it out. Rip the page with your pen. Bleed your pain dry.
Next, be your own kind mentor, receiving the rant. Write a gentle letter back to your ranting self, offering support and encouragement.
Then, if you’ve received a recent critique that left you feeling raw, after getting some necessary distance, try to look at it objectively. Identify whether the critique is asking for something you just can’t deliver or whether it simply touches upon a feeling inside you, such as disappointment because you thought you were finished. Read the critique as if it were written to someone else. Can you find a point or a place of agreement? See if you can’t take just one small piece of the feedback and run with it.
Psychiatry and physiology have been coming to the same conclusions in recent research: that mild, moderate activity can improve people’s moods. Even in extreme cases of clinical depression, the simple act of taking a walk on a daily basis can allow some patients to experience full or partial remission of symptoms. While receiving criticism may not count as a clinical pathology, the effect it has on you may share some similarities. So when you feel the bitter sting of criticism, make sure you get up and do something physical.
I highly recommend walking in a natural setting, if possible. If not, the very act of ambulating is still helpful. Gardening, dipping your toes in a nearby pond, or, if you’re experiencing arctic weather, slapping on the snow gear to feel the cold wind on your skin, can all help.
by Therese Walsh, author of The Moon Sisters and The Last Will of Moira Leahy
Show me a writer who hasn’t received heaps of rejection and criticism, and I’ll show you an unsuccessful writer.
Critique is what illuminates our weaknesses and allows us to shore them up so that we can present our art again—stronger this time. And again, we may be criticized, and again, we are given through that criticism a chance to create exceptional art.
It isn’t easy to be vulnerable to critique—to put our work out there with hope that it will be digested the way we meant it to be, accepted without question for what it is, or labeled as “perfect.” I remember my first experiences with critique and the disillusionment I felt when I realized I hadn’t conveyed what I’d meant to convey or that a character wasn’t seen as three-dimensional. But after a while, something I now call “gut sense” kicked in and told me when those criticisms were right, and how, if I made revisions based on those things, I’d end up with a work that was still my own but that better conveyed the message I’d intended.
That said, not all critique should lead a writer to make changes to his or her art. You will reach a point when a critique feels wrong, when your gut sense tells you, “Nope, not this time.” My debut novel, The Last Will of Moira Leahy, was affected by a village of critique partners and other outside influences, including agents who ultimately rejected the work while imparting some golden nugget of advice. But after five years of work and revising my manuscript more times than I can count, I was given some advice by a rejecting agent that felt … wrong. In a turn that surprised me more than anyone, I rejected the rejecting advice and submitted again to a different agent who then took on my novel and sold it to Random House in a two-book deal.
Gut sense. It’s important.
When you feel discouraged by rejection, take some time—an hour, a day, a week—to consider why.
Embrace rejection. Every time you receive critique, accept it as a gift. What you do with that gift is up to you. Use it. Or don’t. Listen to your gut sense. Perfect it. That’s important, because one day your gut sense will chime in to say, “You’re done, Champ. Get your book out there. It’s ready.”