Is Your Writing Really Flawless?
Oct 4, 2023 1:42:51 GMT -5
Post by Radrook Admin on Oct 4, 2023 1:42:51 GMT -5
Is Your Writing Really Flawless?
There are many things that can hold us back in our progress as writers, such as the refusal to learn proper punctuation. The refusal to give proper importance to using imagery in our stories, and just telling the story instead. The refusal to spell-check. The refusal to proofread in order to correct grammatical errors and typos.
But perhaps one of the most harmful, is the refusal to accept constructive criticism. You know, criticism intended to make us aware of our good points and our bad points.
Why? Simple, because we might believe that our writing is flawless and that anyone who claims otherwise, is simply a liar who is envious of our writing ability or does so due to deriving sadistic pleasure from presenting us with undeserved criticism. Or else we might conclude that those who find errors in our writing are persons who don't really understand what we are striving to accomplish, or else are educationally unqualified to judge our work. Or maybe we will suspect that the persons offering the criticism are evil individuals who deserve some kind of negative karma.
Unfortunately, in this way we create a self delusion which totally impedes our progress and which will keep us firmly stuck in the literary marshland of our own creation.
Now, to make matters worse, we might have wound up at a writing website where no constructive criticism is allowed, and where everyone's work must be rated as Great regardless of its quality. In fact, our work might always be rated as Awesome by the individuals there, either because they are not allowed to find anything wrong, or perhaps because they are not qualified to detect basic writing flaws that they themselves constantly practice.
Simultaneously, we might be submitting our short stories and novels to publishing houses and magazines and having them all rejected without telling us why. Or if indeed we are ever told why, then we decide that the editors don't know quality when they see it.
Well, such conclusions and suspicions might indeed be true sometimes. After all, there certainly are individuals who are motivated by those negative feelings. However, not always. Sometimes, the criticism we are receiving might be based on the desire to help us to improve, and if we unceremoniously rejected it, then we assure ourselves the luxury of feeling that we are flawless while all our rejection slips keep telling us the truth-that we are not.