Taking Criticisms

by Fragon Calfbreaker

Writers are by nature a sensitive group. As I like to tell Hackslayer, "We're all a little insane." I don't mean it as a joke, either. For one thing, you have to be pretty wonky to think that anyone's going to care about what you have to say and that they'll pay you good money for it. And then you turn even wonkier as you try and attempt to make that already-moronic dream into a reality. This coupled with the fact that we usually are in it in the first place because we have an excess of emotion or rage or whatever feelings that have been surpressed by the normal world, makes it not such a big surprise that we as a group are pretty susceptible to suicide.

And so we, as a group, tend to take criticisms very, very, very badly.

We're emo-kids. We're childish immature. We're crazy insane and when we realize that someone has something bad to say about our lifeblood and soul, we do a number of things. We either throw a tantrum, proclaim that the critic does not know what he or she is talking about, and/or then drown ourselves in a sea of sorrow (and maybe blood).

It burns inside. How could someone say such a thing about something that is so dear and close to your heart, after all? Can't they see how utterly precious your work is? Can't they acknowledge that, at least? This is your artwork, your darling, your baby...surely this can only mean that they just simply don't understand!

I remember my first critique. I was fourteen and very stupid when it came to the language. I wrote a brief fanfic at Fanfiction.net for Watership Down, which was nothing more than a 'backstory' for my roleplay character "Ghost". A mary sue rabbit if there ever was one. I was so proud of my piece of shit, and then someone came up and told me that it felt a little stilted.

Stilted? I asked, being very stupid and unfamiliar with the term.

Yes, they said. You know, forced.

It hurt, and for days that followed afterwards I mulled about it in school and at home. I wasn't really infuriated--that's really something I'm not given to at this kind of situation--but I did feel like sinking into a hole and slowly rotting in there forever. Years and years of writing, and stilted is the best I can come up with? I must be a horrible, horrible person.

But the feeling never stopped, and eventually I pulled out my work in Word, stared at it good and hard, selected all the text, and pressed delete.

I wrote it again. And this time, I remembered what I was told, and kept the pace slow. When I grew tired, I put it away for another day. This was the beginning of what would become a 240,000 word series fanfiction, one that was highly praised at the time (despite how bad it was). It didn't stop there, of course, but that was how it really began. How I learned that the only way to stop it from hurting is to go ahead and knock it out and make it right again.

It's your writing, after all. Why shouldn't you be able to fix it?

Critiques are necessary for a writer to improve, until such the time comes when they learn to critique themselves so hard it's as if another was doing it for them. And yes, they are hard to take. But as a writer, especially as a beginning writer, you should always remember that critiques are not done personally. They aren't an attack. They are simply...a reaction to what you have made. It doesn't matter whether they then intend to make their critique sting or insulting, or whether their critique isn't particularly hold-my-hand helpful. It's a critique, and as such, you have the privilege of dissecting it and learning from it.

I look at critiques the same way I look at video game reviews. I read through all of them, good and bad, but mostly the bad. Then I string together the common complains they have. Whether it's done insultingly or not is not a problem--learn to be distant and get the information you need, and use that to fix your work. If five people who have read your story are saying that it's going a little too fast, it may still mean that those five people personally like slower-paced books, but it also means that your book is probably going a little too fast than the average person would want and it's advantageous for you to maybe slow it down a little. Like I don't listen to every single fault video game reviews list, I don't take to heart everything a critique says, but I listen enough to make a critical evaluation of my work.

The worst you can do is take the critique as an insult and ignore it. If it happened once, particularly when your critics are strangers who have nothing to gain from putting you down, it's going to happen again. And probably there IS something wrong with your work that you're just too blind to see. Will you be helping your critic if you fix your work, or will you be helping yourself? Make the choice--it's your piece after all. Ignoring critiques is like taking a fire alarm as a guideline. "Oh, it's ringing. Well, I don't have to go out now."

Yes, it does hurt, and yes, it does break that golden image of yourself you've set up in your mind, but being able to take critiques is a classic sign of a true and mature writer. Reasons like "You're writing for yourself" and "You can't make everybody happy" are really not valid responses for disregarding critiques. Again, you can take what you need and keep in mind that they are said for a reason. If you're not considering your readers when you write--in other words, you just want to put down what you want to put down and not have to worry about the consequences--then why call yourself a writer in the first place? There's a thing called a journal or a diary if you're interesting in writing things that nobody can ever, ever read. And for God's sake, don't ask for an opinion or publish your book and then use those two excuses. That's just laughable and contradictory.

And the best part? There will come a time when the really harsh critiques will stop. Yes--like I said before, you have the option of fixing all of that. You're the writer--you can change things. Eventually, you might actually start getting good feedback, and all because of you learned what not to write and what to write and you worked hard on your piece.