I love criticism directed at myself

[ravenswept]

I've been spending the better part of the day reading about criticism and reviews, directed mostly at horrible young writers with massive egos, antishurtugal and Robert Stanek. How authors take criticism, good or bad, is a widely discussed issue and overall it makes for hilarious reading.

There are several takes on it;

• Some refuse to read reviews or critiques, period. They don't care, they delete immediately, they put up a wall of indifference. This is both good and bad, in that they don't want their own opinions of their work influenced by self-doubt or second guessing. I understand it, and when it works it works very well, but then it becomes very much a bubble world; you're isolated from the outside world and what they think of your work, which is important because they're the ones that make your work popular (or profitable).
  
  
• Others refuse to read negative reviews. While this is nice, you read what good people have to say of you and can kindly let those strangely smoldering letters or email drift into the trash bins, it's not the entire picture. Refusing all reviews is better than this, in my opinion, because when you surround yourself with only good, in your head that becomes the norm. Should a bad, or just critical, note come through the fence of obliviousness, your sensibilities scream "WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU KNOW" and you refuse that it is real. And this will only harm any product that comes in the future, because then you're trying that much harder to prove that single piece of not-good so totally wrong; rarely does this become well recieved.
  
  
• There's the method of refuting all negative comments. You go on the offensive, pulling every piece of evidence you have to prove your detractors wrong, sometimes going to base insults to do so. There's always the favorite "You aren't a published author, who are you to judge" which is pulled by both fans and authors for those who judge; the argument has already been proven a fallacy, but some (i.e. many) still try. All this usually nets a person is a very delicate ego, and the impression that they don't really want any comment that doesn't praise them.
  
  
• Some just take any comment as it comes. This too comes with some consideration, because every author of note usually fears reading something that has some suggestion in it, obtuse or not, and having it somehow make its way into some future work; then comes the cry of foul, which is especially hard to refute should the author have replied directly at any time.

For me, it's all in the frame of mind. If I'm having a good day, I love reading bad reviews, as well as good. I'm not in a place that's going to let me take anything overly critical, and neither am I going to become depressed at seeing hours of hard work come crashing down by some well chosen word structure. If I had a hard day, I tend to stick to some of the better stuff, because there's no point in doing deeper into any funk. And then there are times that I'll grab something that hopefully is not quite venomite but not gushingly sweet, just to remind myself that my head still fits through a door frame and maybe I'm straddling the middle of the road.

Anything that starts with "OMG" and continues with such in the first sentence gets a automatic delete; if you can't properly say what you want without resorting to showing yourself ignorant to basic English, you're done.

Comments

[limiinal.livejournal.com]

I like to take every comment, good or bad, into account simply because it's one more pair of fresh eyes looking over my work. Sometimes it's obvious that the reader has a bias, but even then I find it valuable in knowing that yes, some people will react that way to my work.

Then again, I've gotten used to the sting of critique. I once had a piece of writing called a "bad bodice-ripper." It doesn't get more painful than that.

[ravenswept.livejournal.com]

"You need to read Twilight to get a better sense of romance and true love."

I can't think of bias critique without thinking of the "feminist" look at Firefly. And then I giggle.

I'd say I like negative critique better, because it's going to get a better emotional reaction from someone.