Critique Is a Bitch

With bloody hands, the writer finishes his best story yet. He has just enough time to write Fin before the nurses take him to the madhouse. It was his wife who called for help because he would write for days and nights without eating anything or letting his arms rest.

“astronaut sits next to a round table and arguing with a big troll 3d art” — This is a bot-generated image whose copyright is with the Author, by using DALL-E. The author assumes responsibility for the copyright of this image.

After a relaxing good night’s sleep, he wakes up to a lovely breakfast and the smile of his wife. But he can’t look at her. He first has to grab her phone and check the comments.

“This story is terrible!”

He wanted to answer the bastard. But he can’t. His hands are bandaged.

We all work our asses to write the best stories out there so how infuriating is it when your work gets no recognition, or worse, a bad comment?

Luckily for me, I haven’t come across angry trolls or comments such as the one above on Medium. I’ve been guilty of a lesser comment here, but it was with good intentions. But I’m not here to play devil’s advocate.

I recently submitted a story to a big publication I won’t name here, but I got a comment back.

There’s not enough meat here. The point works, but it could be expanded upon.

Up until now the bigger publications just sent me a generic email thanking for my submission but telling me it doesn’t fit. So how interesting was it that I actually got an honest response?

And thanks to my current day job I’ve learned to live with critique.

You see. Humans are very gentle creatures and some would even say that in this day and age it’s even worse. Feedback is often looked upon as an insult but that’s missing the lesson that is there to be learned.

I’m not a good friend of critique. Far from it. But I have learned to live with it and open my mind to it.

As part of my profession as a software developer, there are many ways to accomplish a task. There are guidelines and additional rules the company you work in applies. So every time you submit a piece of code you first ask for a review.

You cannot submit a new code without a review. My work invites critique by nature.

So after I received that comment on my story I went through the regular phases of critique.

Deny

There’s no way he is right!

All of my stories are rather short and up to four minutes. They are an extension of my subconscious and no more than that. With that said, I am trying to grow a following of like-minded people who arent’s shying away from some weird humor about the nature of life.

Hence why I publish to different publications that match my tastes.

I could resist. I could thank him and be on my way. But perhaps there is a lesson here to be learned. An editor for a big publication has seen numerous stories.

Surely, there is something to what he had said.

Assume

He could have a point…

Assuming there isn’t enough meat to this article, what more can I add?

This question was asked before but in a more mocking way. After the seed was planted in my head I genuinely ask, what more can I add to this story? Can I add more to it without making it meaningless or repetitive?

Try

I’ll just try to apply his advice and see what I get.

After being bullied as a child being naive got the better of me for most of my life. So although I don’t dismiss critique on the spot, I always take it with a grain of salt.

And this is one of the most important takeaways here. Whenever anybody leaves a comment that isn’t just “nice” or “bad” then he shares his point of view. We all have a way to view the world, and this person just took his time to show you his.

You should be grateful! Especially because writing is all about accumulated experience and there is a limit to how much we can learn in the small confinement of our mind.

So I look at my story again, but this time with his point of view. I would only expand the story if I can add real substance because I am writing to provide value to my readers.

And after inspecting it again, I saw more value to be added.

Let go

I guess he did have a point. Now let me apply his advice to its fullest.

We are all on our own asses and it requires a lot of practice to accept someone else’s point of view. Sure, resistance is easy. But what do you learn from it?

So after looking at this critique I tried to add more meat to the story. And you won’t believe it, but it turned out even better! Sure, the story could have stood by itself and worked, but then it would be someplace else.

It would still be stuck in the boundaries of my mind.

Instead, I let go. I added more meat to the story, and the most important thing is that it wasn’t fluff I added. It was a real meaningful substance.

Learn

The advice was good after all. What did it teach me?

Now that I have added more meat to the story I have learned a lesson about myself and my capability to expand upon an idea. And I’ve also learned that the next time I publish to that publication, I will add a lot more substance to my stories.

And it’s important to note that if the previous steps did show that the critique won’t work for you, then it’s okay, as long as you tried. Perhaps if it was a different story there was no more meat to it.

And that would have been okay. It would just mean that it isn’t a fit for that publication.

There’s always a lesson to be learned. And that man could just ask his wife to answer the troll in the comments. After all, her hands are free.