Self-Command and Leadership Archives

Criticism: How to Take What People Say

Criticism is normal in the writer’s world. How you take it is the key to learn and improve. A writer must learn how to take criticism.

Criticism is normal for everyone. To the writer it is part of the path. Writers swim in a sea of thought. Our work is to clarify those thoughts so that we can write something remotely readable and hopefully useful to our readers. That is hard enough by itself. It becomes problematic because everyone has their own inner critic they have to battle every step of the way. The last word is typed and the deed is done. We have taken the work as far as we can. We might be ready for a reader or editor to look at our work or it might be time to publish. Either way we are opening up the doors to external criticism and possible embarrassment.

External criticism can be either good or bad. How we take it and why is the danger . Whenever a writer takes external criticism or embarrassment to heart, we yield control of our minds and our self-worth. Any criticism must be worth it. It must have real value for us and our work. Destructive criticism is less than worthless. We waste precious mental resources and time when our work is governed by unuseful or harmful criticisms.

A writer can control and even eliminate such waste by limiting how open our mindset is when we validate our critics comments. We want to filter those thoughts rather than just accept them. The professional minded writer knows what to take to heart and what to ignore.

Your Critic’s Mind

Often frustrated people say things to vent their own feelings when they are not able to achieve a given goal themselves. A seasoned pro will ignore this prattle. Invalid criticism is only jealousy spit out by someone who cannot achieve the same kind of success they see in others who are busy moving forward. It’s the crabs in the bucket part of life.

Ego driven criticism is far more than just venting. It can lead to crippling mental afflictions that prevent us from attaining many of the life goals we set for ourselves. Such criticism affects everything from our fitness to getting married or advancing in our careers. It is never benign. That is why writers must learn to deal with criticism the right way.

Pro Mindset

The professional writer has developed the mental habit to evaluate all criticism when it is first encountered, then is able react appropriately. This mental shift to filter out harmful criticism is what marks the professional writer’s mindset from the armature writer. A pro writer takes the time to kill off anything that would weaken his efforts.

An excellent place to start is to demystify what we do. When we humble the ego nature of our work, we view it as just work. Writing is no longer some aloof artistic endeavor feeding our personal ego. No longer is it our art, it becomes just works. Work alone brings the creativity and validity we seek. In this way the critic’s opinions cannot hurt personally because the work itself provides the only validity that is needed. When work is no longer part of us we can more easily see if a given criticism is harmful or useful to the work itself without feelings of personal pain hindering our vision.

Pro Process

The writer who wants to develop the professional mindset uses a tough minded frame of reference. He banishes both hate and hope from the work. The only thought is to advance on his goal. It is very much the same mindset that the warrior poet Archilochus had in mind.

“Be brave, my heart. Plant your feet and square your shoulders to the enemy. Meet him among the man-killing spears. Hold your ground. In victory do not brag; in defeat, do not weep.”

Archilochous reminds us to not act reflexively with emotion like pride, fear or anger. We are encouraged to control and govern our emotional reactions with positive action. Do not to take the spears as personal attacks. A developed mind will not allow space for any outside influence to rule in their stead.

Criticism Do Not’s

Do not allow the negative influence of critics to break your belief in the value of your work. That road will only fritter away your time in anger instead of work. You will get zero writing done looking to prove anything to a critic. Do not justify anything or try to find reason, even in your own mind. It’s a trap. Just keep your mind on your current shot. Let those criticisms flow past.

Any kind negative emotional response needs to be shot down. The criticism is not a sign or some kind of judgment of the gods either. Also not allowed are feelings that something is out to unjustly get you be it god and heaven or just karma. That is just your critic using those outside influencers to reinforce its efforts. Ignore them.

What to Do’s

Remember you are the sovereign supreme in the moment. No blow or act from outside you can stop your focused action in the moment. Your job is to do the work before you. It remains in your power to do that work no matter what some outside voice has judged you, your work or anything else.

Remain compassionate with yourself. The writer defines his own reality. Other realities do not matter in your process.

Steven Pressfield

“Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page. Nothing matters that you keep working. Short of a family crisis or the outbreak of World War III, the professional shows up, ready to serve the gods.” The War of Art, pg. 92-93

A professional mindset uses only the writer’s personal opinion to evaluate the value of his work and himself. As writers we must draw that value from the higher self instead of the ego or other outside sources. Our inner critic uses the negative feedback from those other sources to stall and end our efforts. Do not give those outside voice power to validate you or your work.

A helpful outside critique of any work seeks first to improve you, the work or both. That is valid and valuable. Any criticism that only finds faults with you, your work or both is a clear message that you are dealing with a destructive voice. Ignore it.

Writers Ignore Critics

Criticism can be a tool to improve our lives, or it can be a destructive force. The more common criticism is envy driven.

What makes even driven criticism so damaging is that the critics’ voices get in the mind. Once there our brain just does what it normally does. It allows those thoughts to join our mental conversation without editing them. Over time those negative thoughts weaken your efforts to advance. It’s helpful to remember that critics are just another monkey trying to set up shop that master mediators have long advised us to ignore. Those voices in your head are cunning and pernicious. They will do anything to shut you down with the “facts”. Without any effort on our part to purge such things, we find ourselves believing those “facts”.

The envy driven criticism is deadly for anyone. The writer must endeavor to recognize it immediately so that it does not setup house in his brain. Know that the critic is actually just spewing vitriol at the very thing he hates more than anything else, someone doing what he lacks the courage and tenacity to do himself.

How to recognize envy

So how to we know we are dealing with vitriol instead of a real effort to help us? The first step is to listen actively. Don’t just passively accept any advice, including what I am saying here. You need to weigh whether or not to follow the advice. Criticism can be painful, embarrassing or make you mad. Get to know what helpful criticism is and what the motivation of the person we are getting the critique from.

Motivation is the major determiner. Every case is different but in general I have found to ask questions about the critique and what the person is trying to do.

Helpful criticism

While someone may comment on a painful point, a really helpful critic will also seek to give you an answer to solve the problem they are talking about. I have found that most honest and open critics might even be a little more harsh because they favor a clear concise and direct approach. A CCD approach is not an excuse to be rude or destructive or personal. In the Marines, I have gotten such straight talk. It is not an uncommon thing. It did take the wind out of my own ego driven sails. That’s not a bad thing. It was never personal, all behavior. Sometimes that’s how we learn how to fix those things we did not even know we needed to fix.

Constructive critics are also likely to ask you lots of questions to understand your point of view to help them make useful suggestions before they comment. Even if they are working on instinct with no knowledge of exactly how to correct the problem, a constructive critic is likely to tell you it’s a feeling or hunch of what works and what does not. They do not claim some great understanding. This gut criticism can help you make better choices for what to change. Useful critics are often humble in their approach because their desire is to help and not feed their egos.

Egocentric comments are often brought from a omniscient position. All knowing all seeing. You are laid to waste with no chance of redemption.

Respect

Your level of respect for the person is also a great indicator of whether to give the guidance any credit. If the critique is from someone you know and respect who is more skilled than you, you likely are being helped. It’s worth it to spend some time getting their feedback on how to go about fixing things. By corollary, someone you do not respect is often mired in their own self interested failures, so they will lash out at you just to vent some of their bile at you.

Criticism is not about you

One of the most important things to note about any criticism is that you are never the topic. Constructive criticism is always about the idea or the action, not about the person. As such you learn not just what is wrong, but also why they think it’s wrong and what they think you can do about it. Again constructive criticism strives to help build you with some suggestions they think can help. It is almost always more of a suggestion than some kind of sage omniscient command. Constructive criticism often aims at try encouraging you to try again and keep going.

Destructive envy driven critics often put the blame for the problem on you as a personal flaw. The issue is explained vague terms as a problem. You can even be advised to quit rather than be humiliated further. If you pay attention you might even see how this builds them up, at least in their own eyes.

What to do about criticism

There are literally a whole list of questions you could use to evaluate any criticism you might ever come across. However, one of the best methods I have run across is to ask yourself: “Will the change make your life better or just validate the critic’s point of view?” If you will be better, implement the change. If it only gives credit to the critic, ignore it.

I have found this question very useful. A truly helpful person is not really getting anything out of their help other than having helped another person. An ego driven critic is just feeding his ego.

One last criticism point.

No matter the type of advice you receive, it is always best to keep your emotions out of it. Avoid trying to be defensive or getting angry. Remember you are the gate keeper. You decide whether the criticism is valid or not. The control here is yours. This allows you to be gracious, so remember your manners and say thank you. Don’t forget to have some compassion for them too. This is kind to the person trying to be helpful. It is infuriating for the critic trying to level you. Either way you win.

Humility Balances Confidence

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Kipling’s Writing Lessons in IF

Kipling’s writing lessons in If are a treasure trove for the writer willing to put them into practice. When I think of maturity and growing up I find myself thinking about Rudyard Kipling’s poem to his son “If”. I first ran across the poem somewhere back in my child hood. Not sure where I first ran into it. Though, I remember it was referenced and read in class in high school and middle school.

Kipling’s Writing Lessons on Two Importers

Even outside of school I found the poem in some of the most unexpected places from lines on buildings and parks. A friend once pointed out that they quoted from the poem over the player’s Center Court entrance.

“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same”

Society

I have found many writers have used ‘If’ in their books and articles. Some of our pop culture is based on this poem from music classics like Bread’s If (https://youtu.be/qGfVOdTiUEc) to TV shows like Boardwalk Empire’s used it as the theme for the Season Three Episode 11 Two Importers.

College

I have had a college roommate put If up on his wall so he could read it daily to remind himself of the standard he needed to make for himself. It became a kind of mantra for him as he dealt with the struggles of getting through college and getting on with life after the Army.

For most of that time I did little with If other than agree this was the general course a young man like myself should follow, then promptly moved on to other things.

Kipling’s Writing Lessons and the Writer

It was not till I sat down to really look at what a professional writer was that I found that Kipling’s writing lessons were much more than a surface level oration for a child. Even more, I found it was relevant to me as a writer with every beat.

Kipling’s lessons on personal integrity, behavior and growth reach deep into the craft of writing. While the poem serves quite well for a personal philosophy and ethos, it also gives a writer a blueprint to follow for their development as a writer.

Kipling’s Lessons

A writer must dream and think, but we really cannot just dream or think. We must do our work. There are pages to be written, edited, rewritten and published. Then the manuscripts and articles must be promoted and the research for the next tale done.

Every book, article, and work launched is an invitation to success or disaster. The writer must see them only for the feedback and the lessons instead of some stamp on their character or a vote of popularity.

Every time a writer publishes, we gamble with all our emotional and financial winnings of life in one pitch of the dice. The mature writer will take the loss silently, at least as far as others might hear, and return to the keyboard with a feeling of having been spent to try another book or article.

A writer must learn to let no critic hurt you, even the one inside.

Act When You Fall

If packs lessons in every line. There is even a lesson of what to do when the world has crashed down on you.

“If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, …”

No truer words for a writer who has just had a failure. Write something fast. Don’t look down or look back. Write. The power of a writer is that even when there is nothing to be done, we can do something. We can act. We can write.

Kipling Life

Kipling’s own life is a hero’s journey of pain that gives us a clear vision of what our own trials may one day yield in our work. His life was more tragedy than gift. In child hood he was denied him parental love and attention, sent by his parents to a faster mother who beat him. Kipling even failed in school where they tried to instill character traits that he was not suited for. He even found great pain in adulthood with the loss of two of his children.

Yet out of all of that pain and misery he gave us a clear definition of what an adult should aspire to. For the writer becoming an adult is to say that we are turning more professional in our effort to write.

Kipling Set Standard

Kipling himself seems to have lived to the very standard he set for his son in the poem. In his life he was successful as a poet in his early years and gained quite a sound popularity that was able to withstand the later critics who attacked his work as superficial without any deep meaning.

The Work

For Kipling the work itself was the point. Because of this more humble take on both himself and his work, he turned down several honors that included Poet Laureate, Order of Merit and even a knighthood. Out of all of them it was only the Nobel Prize for Literature that Kipling accepted in 1907. The results of his work reach far further than mere egotistically driven self-acclaim.

We still read Kipling’s works today. From his works springs a form of immortality that only a dedicated writer is capable of achieving. After over one hundred years, we are still enriched as we bask in his work. The Jungle Book, Kim, and Just So Stories that enrich us all. Of them all it is If that enriches the writer most.

Kipling’s Writing Lessons for Writers

To the writer just reading through his poem is a complete list of the mind, skills, and strengths a writer need to do battle with one’s own ego. There is not one line that every writer should not commit to memory and habit in their pursuit of the craft.

In the lines we find not just the advice to improve ourselves, but also to practice daily those skills that motivate, encourage… much of it comprised of mantras to use in those times the world comes crashing in and our egos rend our spirit to shreds.

Clairity

If is one of those crystal clear lines of thought that if we head and learn from its guidance, we cannot help but become better people as well as better writers. That is the mark of a true master on the path.

‘If’

by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master,
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

Photo by Artur Aldyrkhanov on Unsplash

Honesty- What does that have to do with writing?

Honesty is a tricky subject for people. We are taught it from the cradle. Yet, at times we are not honest at all. We all tell little white lies to others like “Oh yes what a great dress” or “Sure, I will consider your ideas.” This is often just to smooth the social considerations or avoid making a commitment call now.

This is the kind of vacillating behavior that salespeople are taught to head off at the pass so they can nail down a sale. You see it every time the sales pro says something like, “Now I know what you are thinking…”. The point is not whether he gets it right or not. When he acknowledged that you are thinking is enough to stop you in your “No” tracks. Using white lies a pervasive kind of thinking that is common throughout society for better or ill.

Most of the time when we doge on honesty it is all about our own inner fears. We kid ourselves that we don’t want to hurt the other people’s feelings, but in reality we don’t want to feel bad for saying “No I cannot do that.”

In many cases it serves us well, to some degree. The greatest trouble I have found with this kind of thinking is that we use it on ourselves far more often and with far greater subtlety than we do with others. We are experts at avoiding self honesty.

Honesty in Getting Down to Work

How many times have you avoided sitting down to write something because something else was “more important”? Did you miss publishing deadlines because you were “sure no one wants to read my stuff”. Were your books not completed because you “found something interesting over here to write on just because you were stuck…or worse something to do other than writing at all?”

Using these convient white lies we effectively skip out on our work. If we choose to be honest with ourselves, we can see the problem. What we need to change to make the writing a priority in our lives is right there, just for the moments we accept the lie because likely there is a need for some work or worse we need to grow some where.

Honesty Changes

When you have you enjoyed someone knock your work? Did you take their evaluation and given it time to wander about in your brain before calling them, mentally I hope, an ignorant slob? Are you avoiding taking that course on better blogging techniques just because it will cost $100 or because you can avoid putting up a blog if you don’t know how to do it?

Does any of that sound familiar?

Honesty is said to be the best policy, but it’s also the hardest thing for a writer to do to himself. Being the dream writer floats before our eyes. We want to write like Hemingway or Asimov. We want to be brilliant like Peggy Noonan or Will Rodgers. So many writers we want to be like the greats but none of them are us.

Writing another wrtier’s way is not being true to your voice. Yes, using a given style is useful to learn, but when the learning is done it comes down to just you. The interesting bit here is your voice, the one in your head, knows this. When we try to write with another voice, our voice just politely shuts up. Then we wonder why we failed. We failed because we did not listen to ourselves, our voice. At our higher level we know this. It’s our ego that just cannot be honest about it.

Denaial is our recourse, so we try to write like someone else because we are not them. It’s a form of escapism. The honest writer knows he is who he is and writes his way. When honest self discovery shows improvement is needed the honest writer signs up for a class, gets a book or asks for help. If the same honsety finds that we are stalling by too much practice or research, it is time to shift gears and get that work finnished and published. It is not easy to be honest with yourself.

So what do we do? How do we get honest with ourselves?

Honesty Starts at Listen

The first step is to start listening to our own voice. Write like we talk to another person. Talk on paper to a friend, someone we know. We can talk to ourselves even, younger or older, you choose. The key though is to talk to a specific person you know. It does not matter if that person is living and breathing or if they are an avatar you have imagined. There are no points for how we build the conversation, only that we hold it.

What is the commitment

After we become honest about our own writing voice, we can move on to ask ourselves about other things, like just how much work we will be needed for a project. What do we need to learn for running a writing business? How committed are we to getting something done? The list is long and the first step is being honest with yourself. Then we can be honest with our audience, the work, our editors, critics, etc…

The thing to remember is our honesty starts with ourselves. Build that and the rest starts to fall in place. So where do we go from here?

Honesty is to Know yourself

To be honest with yourself I think takes place over several areas inside yourself and your writing. The start is knowing yourself.

I have been a long accustomed to practices in meditation, reflection and journaling. Regualar reflection has givne me a better understanding of myself and taught me to take criticism better because of it. Recieveing criticism is still not fun, but I am more empathetic to the critic now than in the past. You could say that I am a big fan of these kinds of practices for writers. Many of the old writers like Thoreau were big into it. The biggest reason writers to use such reflective practices has always been that reflection requires self honesty.

Self honesty makes you a better writer.

From my standpoint, a writer’s job is to use their inner self-evaluation and understanding to understand the characters he is creating and the audience he is talking to.

Morning Pages

I took up writing free thought writing ev I am also a big fan of Chet Scott’s Becoming Built to Lead practices. I have fount the mental upkeep from both to have added to my work.

Taking the time to put our thoughts honestly in writing allows us to build the strength to be honest with ourselves like nothing else I have seen. It’s a kind of safe space where you take out the factor of fear of what others might think and just let go. I totally recommend these practices as a way to get to know what is floating about in your mind. The fact is you are never going to be able to write honestly, and your readers will be able to tell, if you are not honest with yourself first.

Honesty is Your Voice

From my experience our voice is basically listening to and repeating that clear voice in your head instead of copying another’s. We deal with other voices in our heads all the time, and outside of writing, reflection or meditation, we frequently ignore it along with all the other voices.

Who are those other voices? For the most part they are the voices of well meaning and loving friends and family that have tried to give us the best advice they found. They are a kind of endless loop of recordings constantly going off in our heads that tend to interfere with us actually having an original idea. This is why so many people have said over the centuries that they did not have an original idea till they were some age or another well past what anyone would consider young.

For a writer it comes down to just one thing. When we are honest with ourselves so that we remain ourselves, we are honest with our writing. Your voice needs to be shining through the word, not your favorite author.

Emotional Honesty

Honestly you are who you are. When we write we are the summation of everything we have seen, heard or experienced. Those things are going to come out. If you want to write better you are going to let them out. That’s why we start with courage when we write. Ours is not a craft for the feint of heart. It takes a warrior’s guts to do this because much of what we will write deals with pain. Our pain.

In dealing with our pain, we have to be honest with ourselves first and before that we have to look at ourselves. Everyone has pain. That pain is going to come out in our writing. Sure we might dim it in some ways to lighten the book’s read. How many kids throughout the years knew that Louis Carroll and Frank Baum’s beloved children’s’ books were about drug trips?

The honesty of both writers’ experiences remained for those experienced enough to see them while the books remained safe enough for more innocent eyes. All in all, it was the honesty that made their books better.

Last Point

This is only a blast off point. My thoughts here are meant for you to start your own effort to get to know yourself and your thoughts. I’ve only covered a couple ideas. There are plenty of other reflective techniques out there. Go reflect on your thoughts a bit. Become a better writer.

After so mush honesty, try to take it slow with Going Slow Makes Mastery

Photo by Larry Nalzaro on Unsplash