Some Things You Can Do With Criticism
That Do Not Involve Shoving It Anywhere
Today I’m talking about criticism of something you’ve written or published. A story, a novel, an essay, a poem, a screenplay, your English homework. You’ve worked hard on it, polished it to a high shine, and shared it with the world. And then the unthinkable happened: Someone read it.
An unfortunate fact of life as a writer is that people will occasionally—if you’re lucky, I mean—read the things you wrote. This is a good thing because if nobody reads your stuff then why write it in the first place? And also because people buying—and, in some cases, reading—your stuff is how you make money from it.
But I am calling it unfortunate—that people sometimes read your work—because human beings are individuals with minds of their own and whatever thoughts they may have about your writing are beyond the writer’s control. The bitterly unfair truth is that all we can do is write the best thing possible. Whether readers recognize our writing for the great work of art it obviously is—that’s all on them.
It’s not just that readers have their own thoughts but they also give voice to these thoughts. This may take the form of direct feedback given to the author—as we experience when a beta reader, editor, friend, or family member reads our writing and tells us what they think about it—or may take the form of a review—a public sharing of the reader’s thoughts on something they read.
Whether direct or indirect, private or public, the readers thoughts may contain praise or criticism or both. However, the reader’s thoughts are shared for different purposes.
When a reader speaks directly to you, the writer (or through your agent or editor), they are providing feedback. The feedback might be solely praise or solely criticism or, more likely, a mix of both. The purpose of this feedback is for you, the author, to know how your writing affects others and how it might be improved (or, if the feedback is wholly positive, that it need not be improved).
When a reader leaves a review, that review is not feedback for the author. The author can certainly choose to take elements of the review as feedback for themself, if anything useful is contained therein, but the target audience of the review is not the writer but the reader.
Reviews are for readers. Reviews exist to help prospective readers decide whether or not to read to book in question and, to some extent, to help readers understand what they have read and what others think about it.
I’m emphasizing that reviews are for readers, and not for the author, because a lot of authors choose to take reviews personally. Not only the content of reviews, but whether readers left one (or not). I often see authors complain that:
They gave a copy of their book to someone and that someone did not leave a review.
Someone gave their book a review, but not a five-star review, and did not consider that a sub–five-star review hurts the author.
Someone read the book, and told the author personally that they enjoyed it, but then did not leave a review (or left a review under five stars).
All of these things suck, when they happen. Just to be clear. It’s totally normal to be upset or annoyed when any of these happens. However: There’s also nothing you can do about it.
I once knew a person who was terrible to work with. In her personal life maybe she was fine. I only knew her at work. She was mean and gossipy, a complete Debbie Downer about our workplace, fobbed all her tasks off on an assistant, and spent hours each day on the phone with her husband. She eventually left the place where we worked and she moved on to a series of jobs she—somehow?—liked less than the one she had with me. After a few of those, she contacted me and asked if I would provide a reference for a new job she was applying for.
I had to gently tell her I didn’t think it was a good idea for her to use me as a reference. This is because I didn’t have anything nice to say and, so long as I was never asked, I would prefer to say nothing at all.
I could always say yes to giving someone a positive reference, even if I didn’t think well of their work, but my industry is not all that big and giving a bad worker a positive reference can reflect badly back on me one day. Personally, I would never give anyone a bad reference—but instead I decline to give any reference if I cannot give a positive one. This is the professional thing to do, I think,
Book reviews are not like this. The reader is under no obligation to say nothing unless they have something nice to say. Further, as people who use reviews, most of us probably—in our capacity as consumers—wouldn’t want that. I know if I’m looking to buy something—anything—from Amazon, I want to see honest reviews. I don’t want to see reviews only from people who had a five-star experience with what they bought—unless that’s everyone.
This includes reviews for things like books where liking or disliking them is a matter of taste. I wouldn’t not buy a book because a reviewer said it wasn’t their cup of tea, or the story just didn’t grab them, or the story has lesbians in it and they don’t like that. I actually specifically buy books that have lesbians in them that other readers didn’t approve of. But reviews for books do help me choose what to read, especially in the aggregate: Did many or most readers like this book? Did many reviewers find it slow to start or hard to follow? Did multiple readers find the characters unforgettable?
When it comes to reviews, as I said, the writer can’t do anything about them. You can’t control whether you get them nor what they say. With direct feedback, the writer can control that to an extent: You can simply decline to share your work with anyone for the purpose of receiving feedback. Or you can only give your work to people who will praise it and offer not tough criticism, like your grandma. Your grandma, mind. Not my grandma. My grandma would definitely let me know when I did something poorly. Or you can share it with people and tell them you’re only accepting feedback in the form of praise and no criticism is welcome.
But when you do receive criticism, which you will if you publish, whether that criticism is indirect and public or direct and private, you will have to decide what to do with it.
You can choose to ignore it. This is absolutely a possibility. Solicit no feedback from anyone, don’t read reviews, and steadfastly ignore any criticism that tries to worm its way into the sandhole you’ve stuck your head in. I’m saying this in a funny way (or trying to) but this is a perfectly valid approach.
You can get mad about it. I don’t recommend this approach because being angry sucks.
You can evaluate it for something useful. Not all criticism is created equal. “This book was terrible” is criticism and “This book suffered from having too much exposition in the first few chapters” is criticism but one of those isn’t actionable and one is. If you have the stomach for it, you can sift through what’s given and see if it holds any value for you.
You can get defensive. I actually do recommend getting defensive. Spend no more than ten minutes on your feelings of defensiveness. Go find a trusted friend and tell them, “Look at this. Can you believe this? I bet this person never wrote and published a book, pah.” Complain about what a first-class jerk the criticizer is. Then go for a walk around the block, pet your dog, drink some water, and get over your defensiveness.
You can use it to improve. If there’s anything actionable in the feedback, you can reexamine your work with a critical eye to see how you feel about it. With this feedback, could you have done better? Would it change your writing for the better, in the future, if you took it to heart and worked on it?
If the answer is yes, then you didn’t just get criticism. You also got a gift.
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