Learning to Accept Criticism as a Writer
A big welcome to guest poster, Nikolas Baron, of Grammarly…
Leave Your Attitude in Your Office
Nobody wants to work with a writer who thinks their work is the best ever, error-free, and never needs improvement. The best writers to ever live had editors and publishers and PR representatives for a reason. Guaranteed your work needs work, especially if you’re a first time writer. Even veterans should remain humble, honest, and happy about accepting less-than-ideal feedback.
Attitudes make it difficult for the people helping you to do their jobs. It causes resentment and anger. They’re trying to help you achieve your goals, why the hostility? Some writers feel that their creative genius shouldn’t be touched and that nobody understands their work like they do. That’s preposterous. How will you get a reader to read your book if only you can understand it? The editors are mainly trying to help you, and them, create sales and make the material more reader-friendly. Not accepting criticism is a sign of immaturity, lack of growth, and lack of understanding. If you can’t see why people are saying what they’re saying, you should ask politely rather than claim your work is sensational the way it is.
Why Accepting Criticism Shows Growth and Understanding
Accepting criticism shows that you appreciate and respect the opinions around you. You understand that you are not error-free and amazing on the first shot and like anything, you need to hone your skills to make it through an editor’s read without burning up every red pen in the box.
Criticism helps you grow as a writer. It shows you what your weaknesses are and where you need improvement. It shows you that you can get better and it’s not an attack on your character. I feel that many writers take criticism as they are bad writers and should never write again. This is not the case. Criticism points out your errors and as a writer, you should be understanding and gracious that this is part of the process of getting better.
As a writer it’s also important to understand your errors. If you can’t understand what you did wrong, how will you improve? Look back through your manuscript and see that, oh, yeah, you did misuse a word, and that oh, no, you used a semicolon improperly on page 395. Criticism pushes you to fix these errors in the future and helps you edit better. If someone doesn’t like the theme of your story, think about whether that is their own personal issue, they never did like romance novels, or if that’s a bigger issue that will affect your target audience. When you take on criticism, you show that you understand your mistakes, are willing to fix them, and are willing to break out of your comfort zone and grow as a writer.
How Criticism Makes You a Better Writer
Criticism has pushed me on every occasion to prove those who doubted me wrong. It builds a fire under me that keeps me striving for a better manuscript, better character descriptions, or better proofreading. As the writer, you should feel it’s your duty to improve for your readers. You want to give them the best experience possible and without criticism, you wouldn’t be able to.
There are also tools that “criticize” for you. Proofreading tools like Grammarly are friendly helpers that identify errors in your work and help you figure out how to avoid them. They give you the tools to grow while also improving your current work. If you can’t work with an online tool’s criticism, I suggest you shouldn’t work with actual people. Grammarly can be a small taste into what it’s like to see an editor’s criticism, but always remember that this is going to be part of the writing process for as long as you write.
Permission Granted
As you accept more criticism and learn from it, you can easily see your writing improve. You’ll learn that most people don’t like certain character traits and that you, if you want to be successful, have to write for most people. Accepting the bad with the good shows maturity and willingness to change; traits that editors look for in great writers. Think of the remarks as energy to propel you to shed their doubts and produce a great manuscript. Criticism isn’t going anywhere, so as a writer, learning to understand why readers said what they did, or why your editor wants you to rewrite a section, is key to your success.
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Bio:
Nikolas discovered his love for the written word in Elementary School, where he started spending his afternoons sprawled across the living room floor devouring one Marc Brown children’s novel after the other and writing short stories about daring pirate adventures. After acquiring some experience in various marketing, business development, and hiring roles at internet startups in a few different countries, he decided to re-unite his professional life with his childhood passions by joining Grammarly’s marketing team in San Francisco. He has the pleasure of being tasked with talking to writers, bloggers, teachers, and others about how they use Grammarly’s online proofreading application to improve their writing. His free time is spent biking, traveling, and reading.
