Stinging Critiques…Don’t Panic and Certainly Don’t Give Up
I know lots of you enter contests so you can get critiques of your work and a few people have told me they’ve been crushed by the feedback they’ve received.
My response done that, had that happen to me. At one point it got so bad I thought about quitting.
If you feel that way, please don’t.
Not only is this just one or two people’s view of your story, remember fiction is very person specific. What one person loves another person might hate.
One other thing you should take into consideration is just who is the person doing the critiquing? Are they published? If so, in what genre? I know lots of contests let unpublished authors read and critique entries which I’m not saying is wrong but it’s something you should be aware of before you decide to send out your work. They judging you on something they haven’t been able to achieve themselves.
Also, what was the tone of the feedback? It’s one thing to tell a writer what’s wrong with their story or what they didn’t like, it’s another thing to show them how to correct the problems they’ve seen.
I had lots of judges tell me what I wasn’t wrong but no suggestions on how to put it right. Bottom line was the feedback from destructive and not constructive and it’s one of the reasons I decided to start my own critiquing and mentoring service.
So if you’ve recently received a stinging critique of your work, don’t cry, not give up, but be even more determined to get that story published because remember it’s just one person’s opinion.
Happy writing.
