Write Your Way Real talk + resources for writers

Saving Daylight in the Dark Night of the Writer Soul

Last week, I shared probably my biggest tip for getting worthwhile writing critique: Find the right people. This week, it's all about you.

Quality feedback is only as helpful as you allow it to be. It's only useful if you let yourself take it on, consider it, and then decide how to proceed. You can get have the top writers, readers, agents, editors, and other pros in your genres giving you the best critiques, but you still have to be open enough to receive it.

Usually that means getting out of your own way a little (or a lot), and creating space for that critique to land and for yourself to weigh it with a level head.

This one is even more personal for me, because once upon a time, I took feedback in all the wrong ways and it nearly killed my writing.

Halfway through college, I stopped writing. It happened on the heels of a writing class peppered with glib hipsters, and helmed by a professor who didn’t create a safe environment for sharing our work. I let myself be convinced I shouldn’t bother.

Before that, writing had always been my refuge. In middle school, I wrote fiction to escape bullying and taunting, which piled onto my feelings of not belonging. It was my escape, my correction, my revenge. In my fiction, I built worlds I could control, where the heroes were kind and just and maybe a little ostracized, but who eventually found their place and people. I wrote poetry to play with words and express emotions from anger to appreciation to awe, and every other letter of the alphabet.

I got attached to writing as “my thing”. I wasn’t good at sports. I got good grades, but it didn’t matter to me beyond making my parents happy, and my nerdiness actually separated me from my peers. I wanted my classmates to like me, but many didn’t and took frequent opportunities to remind me.

All that stung, but at least I had my characters, my fiction. At least I had writing.

In high school, I wrote consistently. Sometimes novels, sometimes poetry, sometimes short stories. In my small school, I was seen as “one of the kids who wrote”, and was deeply engulfed by the bubble of our tiny writing community the entire time. I had an English teacher who I still consider my best writing teacher. I felt encouraged and supported, and I blossomed as a writer.

Writing was a huge part of my identity, both in how I saw myself and how I figured others saw me. The one thing that was mine, the thing that made me special, worthy despite being told otherwise.

College was an overall noisier, less supportive, more discouraging beast.

I had one writing class that was amazing, then that shitty one I mentioned above. In the latter, when someone asked a question like “Why should I care?” about a character or a situation in one of my stories, I heard “Your writing is not worth caring about, which means you’re not worth caring about. You’re worthless and don’t belong here among writers.”

It was a direct jab at my tender core, even though I’m sure it wasn’t meant that way and I was just reading into it. It wasn't personal, but I turned it that way.

Also somewhere deep down, I was offended, because I thought I was better than I was. 😬

Why aren’t these fucking hipsters into my work? I thought. It was a blow to my ego and my identity.

I wallowed in feeling smacked down and focused too hard on guarding myself, even though the critiques themselves might’ve helped me improve. I was green, and bad at taking criticism; my peers were green and bad at conveying their feedback in a way that didn’t decimate others.

Now, two decades later, I can reframe that fumbling “why should I care?” as “give me more, so I can invest in this character and what happens to them.”

I also have perspective around myself as a whole person vs. the writer slice of me vs. the writing I produce.

I am not just a writer. I am NOT my writing. I remain worthy whether I write well, whether I write at all.

But I don’t think I can be whole without writing. I know I want to use it to connect with others. And critique is important for making it the best, most connective it can be.

Receiving Writing Critique Pro Tip 2: Check your ego, don’t take it personally, and never let it STOP you from writing.

My second important tip for taking writing critique: Don’t conflate writing criticism with a personal attack, don’t let your ego get in the way of what serves your craft, and don’t ever let it stop you from writing.

Allow the feedback to be about the writing, about what you can learn and improve. It isn't about you, not really. It's about what's on the page. Let it be stay that way.

And if someone is personally attacking you, that's not a person you should trust with your work.

All this is easier said than done, of course. Criticism or negative feedback — even when constructive — can be gutting and bring us to a doubled-over standstill unsure if we should take a step forward, back, sideways or just sit down and refuse to go any further.

I know this from personal experience and from helping clients parse and integrate the critiques they receive. So, you're definitely not alone if you struggle with turning feedback into actionable edits and revisions.

Part of writing a great book is getting out of your own way. I'll help you do that with guidance and support that takes you down a clear path.

Reminder: MWBC's March Read + Meeting Details

We're reading and discussing Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas's punch-packing Dear America, Notes of an Undocumented Citizen this month.

🗓 March 27th, 7:00pm EDT, Zoom. Questions are coming soon, so save your spot.

Don't stop writing!

Cornelia ✍🏼