For a while now I've been planning a post in my head (there's a lot of them in there. They just take a while to come out, and sometimes they are better for it - like this one). The more I think about this topic, the more it grows.
About a week ago, a small chain of events happened on Youtube, with one piece of it ending with a video made by Hank Green. And it ties in very much with one half of this post.
So, first of all, watch the video.
Now for part one (which doesn't really tie into the video - that comes later).
Criticism.
If you are a creator of something, anything, then criticism will be an important part of your life. I'd mainly thought about it in terms of writing until I had a conversation with a friend of mine (a professional artist named Jane). Jane and I compared writing to drawing. No matter what it is, no matter how well you think you did, when you have an editor look at it, especially a professional editor like Jane's, you'll usually have your work returned to you, "bleeding ink." Referring to the red pen people often use to mark notes on something.
Which can be disheartening, to say the least.
But here's something you have to know.
Get over it.
Seriously.
People comment on your work to help you get better, not to make you mad (and even if you know this, it can be hard to follow your own advice. What? Don't look at me... okay. Maybe some.) Another thing to think about. Are you mad at the people giving you advice? Are you annoyed that the found the holes you didn't think were noticeable? Or are you annoyed that your work wasn't quite to the level you hoped it was? The latter is probably what gets me.
In my writing class last semester, the author wasn't allowed to speak when people were commenting on his/her work. Which made a lot of sense. Because given the chance, most creators will try to justify their work, or make excuses. Granted, sometimes the author is right. But if people are mentioning that they didn't understand something, or that you left something out, then you as a writer did not complete your job. This is where it helps to have a big group of people, to confirm or deny the comments of the others.
Even so, some people really just can't take suggestions or criticisms of any kind. And these people are a freaking pain to work with (I've fortunately had little experience with these people). Suggestions are not meant as a personal insult. And you are not perfect. People have good advice to offer, if you let them. They take time out of their day to read and make suggestions on your stuff.
Also, there's no way you can follow everyone's advice. This is where you, as the author/artist need to figure out the best way to fix the problem.
So, suck it up, make a note of it, and look at it again. Even if you need to let your head cool a bit first. Because what might annoy you at first will often make much more sense in hindsight.
And if you're confused, ask the person. Maybe if you explain why this happened, the reader will go, "ohhhh yeah! I didn't notice that!" And even after that, you might want to check that you were clear enough. Maybe the reader read too fast, or wasn't paying enough attention. But maybe you really could make it clearer.
A lot of criticism is good, assuming it's the good kind of criticism. A kind that points out your flaws, hopefully letting you know what you can do to fix them.
Telling someone that their stuff is full of problems and that the suck and should just give up is bad. That's just plain mean and completely not cool.
At the same time, just telling someone that their work is "good" or "bad" doesn't help much either.
So, criticism is good. Usually.
Which brings us to part two.
Okay, great. You have people willing to spend their time editing your stuff. Even if it annoys you, you listen and try to fix your mistakes.
But this is only half of it.
Sure, you have your mistakes.
But what did you do right?
I thought about this for a while and managed to convince myself that fishing for praise was just stupid and vain. Which it can be.
Then I saw Hank's video (above), and rethank (rethunk?) this idea.
Fishing for praise is usually a rather vain thing to do. But that does not mean that you can't know what you did well. After all, as Hank said, you've been pouring yourself into this creation, spending hours, days, weeks on it. It's part of you. And showing it to others can take a lot of courage (I think I'll write a post just about this). And yes, you definitely need to know how to improve.
But you also need to know what you're good at!
Maybe your reader said that your descriptions of the setting were really vague. That you needed to put a lot of thought into where your people are, what's around them, what they look like.
But maybe they absolutely loved your character development. You'll never know unless someone tells you. Because like you didn't notice how bad your setting was, you can't be sure how good your character development is until an outside person peers inside.
My creative writing teacher obviously understood this. Because every time we read a story, we had to write not only our suggestions, but also what we liked about the story.
So, not only do compliments make you feel happy (sometimes happier than it really warrants, even if they're very non-specific) but they can help you improve too.
Fact of the day:
You had a long post, so you get an article as opposed to me writing more.
Basically, there's good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. You want low bad cholesterol, and high good cholesterol. Here's some tips on achieving the latter.
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