Novelists often remark that their books are like their babies. Nobody wants to hear that their baby’s ugly. When you receive a critique or a rejection that crushes your ego, it’s painful. Published authors also experience this type of rejection. A bad review, a pan by someone you hoped would endorse or some other slight can send you right to the pity party. Of course you don’t tell anyone you’re upset. You say, “thanks,” and silently suffer or cry on a sympathetic writer’s shoulder. What’s the most beneficial way to endure feedback that stings?
Writing Tip for Today:

• Sometimes feedback is good but hard to hear. If you are writing a first novel, chances are you have a lot to learn. Your choices? Change everything. Change nothing. Let it sit for a few days and then change only what you believe helps.
• Other times, jealousy, rigidity about writing rules or just a bad day prompt critique partners, agents and editors to trash your stuff. Some writers are so focused on rules, they don’t consider that a writer could break one and make it work. But on the other hand, a writer who doesn’t master the rules probably shouldn’t break them. As Somerset Maugham famously said, “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are.”
• Most times, the answer is in-between. The advice to “take what you can use and the rest you can lose” is wise. If you hear the same feedback from more than one trusted or experienced source, pay attention. But just because one writer condemns a tool or device you utilized, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s wrong. Remember, there are only two kinds of writing. Writing that works and writing that needs work.

Try This! What’s your method for handling a harsh crit? Why do you think writers are insecure about their work?