The Truth about Critiques

*edit... I'd like to thank my kids for the original title of this post. Th

My husband pointed me to something interesting the other day. For those of you who don't want to click through and read it, it's a post that someone put on Yahoo Answers, asking for a critique of a first page. The poster didn't put anything to identify the work and the resulting critiques varied from constructive to pretty harsh. One person even said that the poster knows it needs work, so why ask people to look at it. What the people responding didn't know is that this was the first page of a book by David Foster Wallace, INFINITE JEST. This book is considered by many to be a genius work. It's on several top 100 lists. And people were tearing it apart.

So? What's the point, you may ask. I have two thoughts I want to share.

There will never be a point at which our books are going to be acceptable to everyone. Being published won't make people like what you wrote. There will always be something more that could change. There will always be a critic who can't understand or doesn't connect with what you wrote. It doesn't mean that your work has no value or that others won't see it as good and meaningful.

Second, just because someone says you need to change something, it doesn't mean they are right. You are the one who knows your story best. At some point, if you keep changing things to match what someone else thinks, it's no longer your story, but theirs. You have to carefully weigh the critiques against your vision of the story and know when to stand your ground.

And there you have it, friends. What are your thoughts?

Going Overboard

So, I entered a blogfest in which you post the first 250 words of a story. (You may have read the entry earlier this week.) I got some pretty good feedback on it. Many people said, "You just need to tighten it up a little and it'll really pop." And then there were a few comments that seemed to say, "You're doing this wrong. Try harder." Granted, that is not what was really being said, but that's how it felt.

I was talking to my husband about it and told him I needed to start over on the whole thing. He said, "Aren't you going a little overboard? You don't have to do anything, if you don't want to." And you know, he was right.

A lot of the time, my first reaction to criticism is to think that I'm not good at anything. I'm obviously missing the boat. The story has started in the wrong place. I need more of something to make it better. And I want to scrap everything good and meaningful and try to make it into something more acceptable.

What is it about this profession that makes us rely so heavily on the opinions of others? Maybe it's the isolation. Maybe it's the lack of visible success. I don't know. What I do know is that I have to do this for myself and not for what other people think. Does that mean I don't listen to criticism? No. Does it mean I need to trust myself a little more? Yes.

So, friends, do you go overboard like me? How do you handle criticisms?