New novel hopeful

[Clueless Morgan]

Clearly, the pact I made with the devil did not come to pass, for I am not a great writer.

But you might become one.  Listening to rather than debating criticism, may get you there.  Hint, if we missed your point, then you need to reevaluate communicating the point.

100% agree.  I spent about half my academic life (pre-university and university) in some sort of artsy program and there are days in those programs where you sit around and critique each others' work, and get critiqued yourself.  I've been told that my presentations were badly laid out, that models I've built were hideous, that I missed the point of the assignment, that nobody in my crit group understood my piece or my design, and on and on...  They weren't telling me this stuff to be mean to me, they were telling me this stuff so that I could better understand how OTHER PEOPLE were interpreting what I was doing so that I could improve in future projects.

That's what critiquing is all about: finding out just how successful we, as artists, designers, writers, etc., are at communicating what we are meaning to communicate to our audiences.  We don't get anywhere as artists by stroking our own egos or getting down on ourselves when we trip over our own feet, but when we can find out from others where we're falling short in our efforts we can take steps to improve.

I have been writing since I was sixteen and I am now thirty five.  I might get there?

YES!!

It's natural to be biased to our own work - we, after all, are the one making it, pouring our sweat and blood and tears and time into it, we know all the awesome things about it and why everyone else should think it's awesome, too, so when we finally present it to the world and seem to fall flat on our faces it's reasonable to want to retreat back into our safe little bubbles.

Believe me, Kitan, I've been there.  I know what it's like to present something I thought was spectacular, or that I was really excited about, only to have someone I really respect tell me it was awful - and not only that it was awful, but tell me exactly how it was awful and to what degree I had achieved that awfulness.  It makes you want to crawl under a rock and die.

Go ahead and crawl under that rock for a while and lick those wounds, but if you want to improve you have to eventually come out, dust yourself off, and honestly assess if that person is making a fair point in their critique.

You know what?  That presentation I put together was pretty bad.  And that model was really ugly.  And what I learned from those mistakes made my future work better.

Use this opportunity to improve your work.

Highly doubtful.

 

Not highly doubtful unless you start to open yourself up to constructive feedback.

Perhaps I should just write for myself and never share any of it.  That seems more logical.

If you want to professionally pursue writing, find yourself a writing group and start sharing your work.  Listen to the feedback you are getting and don't take it as a personal attack, take it for what it is: people sharing with you ideas on how you can improve your work - and in turn you get to read their work and share with them how you think they can improve their work.