August 28, 2023
How a Writer Can Be Immune to Criticism
Reading negative criticism – worse still: mere ratings – about something you made isn’t easy. Few people want to hear they’ve failed (though failure is an intriguing concept), and writers are no exception. An author who has spent endless hours and effort writing a book understandably feels dejected reading “I didn’t like it”. Is there a way for a writer to be immune to criticism?
The answer is yes, otherwise (self-evidently) this post wouldn’t exist. However, there are a couple of caveats we need to get out of the way:
- A writer can be immune to criticism, but this does nothing for the criticism itself. In other words, what an author has control over is their own reaction. What others feel reading that piece of criticism, or whether any shortcomings the criticism describes are valid or not is beyond the scope of the post.
- As a term, immunity might connote total defense. However, since we’re dealing with psychological reactions and strategies, immunity is very subjective and also not quantifiable. In other words, to become, as a writer, immune to criticism doesn’t necessarily mean you will be 100% carefree and not care about it.
And so, with this in mind, in this post I’ll share with you some strategies so you, as a writer, can become immune to criticism. As I said, these strategies are psychological and describe your own reaction toward any criticism.
A Writer Is Immune to Criticism When They Don’t Care About It
This is a bit tricky point, and you perhaps can guess why. We can’t get better in writing unless we learn how to avoid things that didn’t work and how to support things that did.
To some extent, this is a personal process. As I often say, a writer is the final authority on their own work. Other people might offer suggestions – some of them good, some misguided, some atrocious – but it’s up to the author to escape their own literary ignorance and reach the point they need to reach.
Nonetheless, criticism can be useful. Therefore, when I say that a writer is immune to criticism when they don’t care about it, I am certainly not suggesting ignoring all criticism, always. This is especially important when it comes from a position of knowledge. That is to say, it’s one thing to care about what some guy on Goodreads said about your novel, and entirely another when a writing advisor or a professional editor suggest something.
Yet a word of caution: Let’s not fall victim to the argument from authority fallacy here. Random people on Goodreads can be right, just as professionals can be wrong. This is especially the case with a non-quantifiable process, such as literature. The content will always matter more.
Both for this reason – identifying criticism worth considering – and for shielding yourself against criticism, it’s important to separate the content from its parenthetical context. Let’s see how.
Dimensions of Criticism
There are certain factors at play when you, as an author, encounter criticism. Let’s list them:
- The “objective” quality of your work. This is extremely problematic; I should put another three dozen quotation marks around “objective”. There is no real objectivity in art, that much is obvious. However, let’s not be naive, either. There is such a thing as a badly written text. We can’t quite define it – hence it doesn’t have an objective stance – but we can reach a consensus regarding what constitutes a badly written text – at the very least in terms of technical skill.
- The “objective” quality of the criticism. Again, this is problematic – perhaps a click less compared to art, because criticism is at least meant to be objective. Still, we can separate between “criticism” in the form of three letters and a detailed analysis explaining what worked and why.
- Your mood when you read the criticism of your work. If you’re having a bad day or going through a rough time in your life, certain things will affect you.
- The style, motivation, and even emotional IQ of the person writing the criticism. Some people’s style (e.g. focusing on correcting others’ mistakes, ignoring what went well), motivation (if they are having a bad day and want to vent), or emotional IQ (e.g. their ability to exercise empathy) can affect the way the criticism will look and feel like to read.
The first two items, though not entirely objective, are closer to what I referred to as “the content” in the previous section. That is, the part of criticism that can be of use to you lies there. The exact worth will depend on the quality of your work versus the quality of the criticism.
If, for instance, you feel unsure about your work – perhaps it’s your first book – and you encounter criticism written by an experienced scholar, it carries a weight much different compared to a scenario where you are confident about your work – perhaps having accumulated many years’ worth of experience – and you encounter criticism in the style of “argh, I didn’t like this book” offered by Joe Nobody.
The other two items of the list are what we should focus on.
A Writer Can Be Immune to Criticism in Its Psychological Dimensions
In plain terms: You, as a writer, can be immune to criticism once you separate its content from its psychological dimensions.
Here’s a piece of criticism I received for The Other Side of Dreams:
Arghhhhhhh
Link to review on Amazon
What a disappointment
I kept reading, hoping it would get better
It didn’t
Didn’t round up the characters in t h e end,
Wasted time
The only thing potentially useful there – the content – is in “Didn’t round up the characters in t h e end” (sic). Everything else falls under psychological dimensions (here related to the person who wrote the criticism) and can be automatically ignored.
Parenthetically, if you pay attention to the “content” you’ll realize it really… isn’t. The reason? It expresses preference. The reader probably disliked the open-endedness of the ending, but that is of no concern to me, since that was precisely my goal.
Most of the criticism that makes you hurt as a writer when you read it refers to things you can ignore.
Some Practical Tips on Shielding Against Criticism
Most of the things you can do to immunize yourself against criticism have to do with the psychological dimensions I referred to above.
The first obvious thing to do is to avoid reading criticism when you know you’re not in the right mood for it. Some days are simply unsuitable for such a thing. Or perhaps you need to reset your brain – go for a walk first.
Another important thing is to assess the psychological dimensions relevant to the critic. That is, try to “read between the lines” to gauge whether to take them seriously. More still, you should try to gauge what to take seriously. Even knowledgeable people can have an awful style or low emotional IQ. Separate that from the content of their critique.
Strategic Considerations
Besides these, there are also some other, more strategic things to consider. I call them strategic because they are about how you relate to your work.
The first one is a cliche but for a reason: You are not your work. Taking criticism of your work as a personal attack is both needless and unproductive. It just makes you upset without helping you address issues – if there are any.
Another strategic consideration has to do with the repercussions. Ask yourself, why does it matter when someone criticizes your work? Are you worried it would affect sales? Are you questioning your value as a writer? There is something underlying there you need to address instead. A reaction to criticism is only a symptom.
Ultimately, whether a writer can be immune to criticism or not boils down to some fundamentals about writing. Are you writing as a writer or as an artist? Are you focusing on sales or on community and meaning? Each person is different – both as a writer and as a critic – and there are no hard-and-fast rules.
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Where was this post when I was learning to write the way I wanted to? I ask, only partly facetiously, because I had to figure out a lot of this by myself.
I eventually figured out those reviews tell you as much or more about the reviewer than about your work, especially the negative reviews. If there is enough information, you can do your best to keep those readers from being attracted in the first place – that’s the advertising/marketing side. Otherwise, you learn to take any tiny nugget of actual useful feedback, and discard the rest.
Once you have satisfied your own standards, of course.
I hope to find a wider readership than I have already, but I’ve always written for myself, for the few books I may eventually have on a single shelf in the Skilled Nursing room at the end of my days, which I hope represent my best words.
Hopefully posts such as this can help beginning writers, giving them a bit of a headstart. Still, I think many of the lessons described here cannot quite be learned vicariously; they need to be lived through.
In other words, I think figuring it out for ourselves is probably a necessary part of the process!
The first negative review I received was for Vokhtah. The gist was that he [the reviewer] liked the world building but couldn’t get into the characters. It hurt, but as I’d worked very hard to create alien characters that were as little like humans as possible, it was also a kind of backhanded compliment, of sorts.
The second negative review was for the first book of my Innerscape trilogy. It was my first, and so far, only 1 star.. The reviewer said that he got 6% in and asked for a refund as the story was too slow. Boy did that one hurt! I grew up reading the classics so in comparison to War and Peace or The Mill on the Floss, my story positively galloped along.
I tried to shrug that 1 star off but couldn’t. In the end, I took a good long look at the opening chapter and tightened it up, just a bit. I don’t know whether that made the story more palatable to readers, but it made /me/ feel that the work was that little bit better. And ultimately that’s what counts. I’m now proud of that 1 star review. 🙂
Regarding the backhanded compliment you mentioned, that’s exactly how I approach “reviews” such as the one I quoted in the post. To write something like “What an ambiguous ending, it’s impossible to know for sure what happened” would please me a lot, since I’m aiming for that. It would of course be better if the people (correctly) detecting what’s there actually understood why it’s a fitting ending, but I can’t help them with that.
About pace in particular, though I’m not a big fan of the classics in the way they take ten pages to describe a royal garden, it’s important to recall how attention spans have changed dramatically in the past couple of decades. I was watching a scene of a 70s western on YouTube with characters basically looking at each other for a good five minutes saying nothing, the only action is a metal sign squeaking in the wind. And then they shoot. Such a scene could not have been made today. And we’re taking about movies, let alone literature!