As a writer, you will counter criticism often—from your editors and from your audience. While criticism can be a bitter pill to swallow, it can be a wonderful tool.
Through all the good and bad reviews, the most important thing to remember is that to be a good writer, you must always seek to improve your craft. Practice will never make perfect, but it will make you a better writer, and learning from criticism is an essential part of that practice.
You may not always agree with what your editor or your audience is saying, but it is important to look at why they are saying it. Look at criticism as an opportunity to look at your work with fresh eyes. You don’t have to take everything to heart, but to dismiss it out of hand is to lose out on a valuable learning experience.
Now, not all criticism is legitimate, and you should never take it personally. Reading a bad review can be disheartening, but remember that most reviewers are not out there to put you down—they’re there to help you out, to point out areas of weakness, areas for improvement.
Some reviews are useless—any review that begins and ends with THIS IS GREAT! or THIS IS AWFUL! and offers no evidence to support the statement can pretty much be discounted. Unqualified praise can make you feel good, but it is at best, useless, and at worst, dangerous—never think that you’re too good to improve.
The wonderful thing about releasing our work into the wide world is that people from all walks of life—our friends and family, perfect strangers—have the chance to read what we put out there. Do yourself a favor and take your readers and critics seriously—they will appreciate you for it, and you will grow to appreciate their feedback as well.
Editorial Assistant Jessica Shen’s latest project, Mechanized Masterpieces: a Steampunk Anthology, is now available on Amazon, Barnes and Nobel, and Kobo.
Her next project, the Mind Games anthology, is slated for release on July 31, 2013.