Which Is It? Criticism or Feedback?

As a writer, you hear the terms criticism and feedback a lot. The first carries a (sometimes undeserved) negative connotation, the other, a more positive and constructive one. The truth is, feedback and criticism are both necessary and helpful to a writer, as long as the writer understands the context in which each is given, and, more importantly, the context in which they should be given.

This’ll be reductive, but here’s how I look at the two terms. Feedback is given to an author while the work...