If you’ve been sharing your writing for any length of time, you’ve probably encountered criticism that makes you want to slink away and never write again. Maybe you’d rather keep that book you worked on for years tucked away in deep storage. Or write your memoir in secret, for your eyes only.
I’ve been there. Many times.
My first graduate workshop was soul-crushing. True, my story was mediocre at best, but my teacher’s feedback shut me down completely. To this day, the only remarks I remember from him amount to this:
“The father is an asshole.”
and
“This is just lazy writing.”
For the next few months, straight-jacketed by fear and worthlessness, I wrote vapid prose. Cookie-cutter stories that plodded to predictable endings. Insipid characters. Truly, the deadest stuff I’d ever written.
If I hadn’t been duty-bound to send my mentor twenty-five pages of prose every month, I’m pretty sure I would’ve stopped writing altogether.
I was so terrified of having my writing judged harshly again, I guarded myself the only way I knew how.
By playing it safe.
I’m happy to say I didn’t stay stuck in that safety dead zone. And I’ve never felt slammed down by feedback since. Not because my work was never criticized again. But because I shifted my approach to receiving feedback. And I stopped feeling victimized by it.
Here’s what I’ve learned:
1. Choose Your Trusted Readers
Most of us want to hear what’s not working in our story as long as it isn’t delivered with malicious intent. There’s a difference between constructive and deconstructive feedback. And some comments are so off base they’re downright irrelevant.
Flaws in our works-in-progress are inevitable and necessary, and it would be a disservice not to be called out on them.
But I think our best readers are like loving parents. They don’t just berate us for screwing up, they also catch us behaving. Sometimes it takes a perceptive and generous reader to catch us being good.
Our trusted readers intuit what our work in progress is striving to become. They help us explore why we’re writing it in the first place. And they open us up to our work’s possibilities. They don’t just ferret out flaws, they help us elevate our writing.
When it comes to whose feedback to consider, choose wisely.
2. Become Your Own Best Judge of Your Work
Get a fix on what you already suspect isn’t working in your draft before getting feedback.
Start by clarifying your intentions.
What is this story about? Who is it about? What transformation does the who of your story experience by the end?
Then try to be objective. Where do you think you’re falling short? Where do you feel the work is vague, confusing, illogical, or sluggish?
Putting your own critical eye to your pages makes you an active participant, not just in the critique of the story at hand, but in your development as a writer.
It helps tailor the feedback to what you most need.
And helps you become more selective about whose feedback best serves your work.
3. Ask Questions
Articulating feedback in a way that’s both kind and helpful takes practice. And sometimes we have to nudge a reader to get at the essence of a harsh remark.
I once had a peer tell me, smugly, that he couldn’t for the life of him, figure out who the audience for my short story was. He’d pondered this long and hard, apparently. But the only audience he’d been able to fathom were middle-aged housewives who listened to Neil Diamond.
Okay. So he didn’t like my story. Fair enough. But I wanted to know why. After pressing him for something more specific, he realized what vexed him – my main character’s failure to change throughout the course of the story.
Now, this was a valid criticism. Useful, too, because it opened up a fruitful discussion about what my character wanted. I had felt nebulous about her desire while writing and my manuscript reflected that. Getting clear on my character’s core desire was a crucial element in charting her transformation in subsequent revisions.
Don’t defend your work. Instead, encourage readers to articulate where and why they have the reaction they do. Then ask for concrete suggestions for making the story better. If they haven’t taken the time to really think your story through, move on. They’re not your trusted readers.
4. Keep a Beginner’s Mind
Stay open, curious, and eager to write your best work.
A beginner’s mind isn’t just for beginners. It applies to the masters, too.
As novelist Paul Aster said, “Each book is a new book. I’ve never written it before and I have to teach myself how to write it as I go along.”
No matter how many successful stories or books you write, every time you start something new, you will feel like a tenderfoot all over again. You will still wrestle with point of view, structure, how to make characters more layered and interesting, how to keep flashbacks to a minimum, and a barrage of other flummoxing issues. You’ll navigate those issues with more sure-footedness, but you will experience the same confusion, frustration, and doubt all over again.
With a beginner’s mind, you realize there’s no there there. Mastery isn’t an end result. It’s a life long process.
And this is the mindset you want to bring with you every time you submit your writing for feedback.
It helps to say or think going in, “Look, I know this draft is not up to its highest version yet. But I’m going to share it with you anyway. What I need from you is to tell me where I’m going wrong. Where am I going right? I’m trusting you to help me bring this draft to its fullest potential.”
5. Drop Your Vanity
It’s been over 17 years since my first graduate workshop. And it’s taken me nearly half that long to realize why it caused me to retreat into my shell. It wasn’t just my teacher’s caustic delivery about my story’s shortcomings.
More to the point, there was a disconnect between the quality I believed my story held and what actually played out on the page.
Because secretly don’t we all want to hear that our work is a done deal? That our story’s brilliant? Publishable? Or, at the very least, almost publishable?
The discrepancy between our own notions about our work and a reader’s response can crush us to the core.
I may not like what my workshop teacher said. But his intentions were good. He was fighting for my story. A story that was deeply flawed. Had I gone into that workshop without my vain preconceptions, I might’ve handled his criticism with more resilience.
That fear and worthlessness I felt? Yeah, I have to take full credit for that.
6. Give Yourself Permission To Get It Wrong
That scene you thought you nailed isn’t going over so well with your readers. They’re confused. Impatient. They don’t get your character. They’re not on board with the mother’s desire to have an adulterous affair with her marriage counselor.
Now you’re unhappy with your writing.
And that’s okay. That discomfort is natural. And instructive. It’s telling you where you need to grow.
Every story or book starts out as a dim version of its potential. Just know this: where you are right now is not a reflection of what you’re capable of.
So get it wrong. It’s only by writing that failed draft that you’ll gain the nutrients necessary to write it better next time.
7. Don’t Be Afraid to Write Bad Stuff
You’re going to write reams of bad stuff before you write anything good. And you’re going to write lots of good stuff before it resembles anything publishable. Our early drafts are rarely stellar works of art. It takes re-envisioning and relentless rewriting to transform raw material into something elegant and beautiful. It takes time. Rigorous practice. And candid feedback from our readers.
That feedback isn’t always going to feel good.
We have no control over who lifts us up or tears us down. Not in workshop and not outside of it.
But we do get to control how we react to that feedback, good, bad, or indifferent.
Not everyone will fall in love with your writing.
And that’s okay.
What’s not okay is that you allow yourself to be flattened. Or silenced.
Keep writing.
Focus on what your work needs to be better, richer, deeper.
Just don’t play it safe.
Over to you…
Have you ever felt flattened by feedback?
Share your story in the comments below.