Welcome back!

There are times as a writer you have to deal with negative feedback, but usually in a critique circle you also get positive feedback. You’ll find out what’s good and bad all in the same sitting. This sort of critique is what helps writers grow. Without it, we’ll keep making the same mistakes over, and over again.

But then there are times when you get feedback like this: “Your story/book sucks”.

Nice, huh?

This sort of negative feedback is not helpful and in many cases for some writers can cause severe damage to their writing career if they’re not thick skinned enough. They feel like they’re being attacked on a personal level and they let the harsh words poison their soul to the point where they’re petrified to even pick up the pen/sit in front of the keyboard.

So the question is, how do you deal with this sort of destructive feedback?

There are several approaches I like to take:

1. Ask why they feel this way: Just as someone has every right to say negative things about your work, you have every right to ask them why they feel this way. Hold them to their words and demand specific reasons so you can improve your work. If they’re tight-lipped or refuse to elaborate then…
2. Hold their negative feedback up to public scrutiny: If someone gives you negative feedback, especially in a public forum, and then doesn’t want to say more about it, you should call them out it. Ask them if they’re more interested in attacking the work or the author than providing real feedback to improve the it. Usually, this will get the person giving a negative review to either provide their reasons to why they feel that way about your work or cause them to attack you personally. If the latter is the case then…
3. Ignore it: Sometimes there are people who like to post and say negative things just to spark argument and ill feelings. On the internet, they call this sort of person a Troll and when you identify a Troll either on the internet or in real life the best thing you can do is ignore them. Just file away their feedback as bogus and useless and continue what you were doing without even paying any attention to it. It never happened, so there’s no need to worry about it.

The last approach can be difficult, but as a writer it’s an essential skill you need to develop to survive. You won’t make everyone happy with your writing, and there will be those who think you write so badly they’d recommend you break all of your fingers and gouge your eyes out so you never will be able to torture the world with your foul verse. Once you accept it, you can shrug off any negative feedback and ad hominem attacks and continue to do what you love best: writing.

Have you ever found yourself staring at your screen and praying to your fickle muse to grant you the strength to take the words out from deep within you?  If you say yes, stop it.  Yes, I said stop trying to get a hold of her, because she’s on vacation in Cabo San Lucas and the last thing on her mind is you.

So how do you get back on track?  How are you going to write that blog entry?  Finish that piece of flash fiction?  Top off the novel you’d been writing for the last six months?

Try a writing burst.

A writing burst is a session of writing where you concentrate on nothing but output.  It doesn’t matter what you write as long as you write.  If you wanted to you could focus on writing a letter to your grandmother, a blog entry, a recipe, a short story, or your comprehensive plan on taking over the world using only strawberry Twizzlers.   The point is you just have to write something.

To keep things flowing well, I recommend your writing burst be fifteen minutes long.  Fifteen minutes is a small enough piece of time where it doesn’t feel like a major commitment, but isn’t small enough were you’ll be out of time before you even started.  It also helps you silence your inner editor long enough for you to sit down and produce.  Once your fifteen minutes are over, you’ll be surprised at what you’ve accomplished.

For example, I finished this entire blog entry in fifteen minutes.

If you’d like to try a writing burst, call or message a couple of your friends who also have writing to do and do an impromptu writing burst.  Have no writing friends?  Join me on Plurk and we’ll go ahead and do a writing burst together.  You’ll be happy you did, and your muse will be even happier you’ve left her alone with her tall Piña Colada sunning at the edge of the pool.