I turned it in to a creative writing teacher who is also a published (and pretty big name) writer. I got a B, and he gave me some excellent reasons for this. The story had flaws I hadn't seen before. I have been telling myself all day that I'm still learning, that I have only been writing seriously for two years now, that I'm only 18. But it bugs me that I didn't see those flaws in my story. It bugs me that I don't pay close enough attention. I start thinking that I'll never quite cut it.

“This is not for you
never was for you
f--k you;
this not for you…”

There’s more to the song then the above lyrics but you can see why it would help.

JOHN!

PS: I've also found depression to be a great influence as well. Not depression over my writing, but like depression over a girl. You can just dump all those unreturned feelings and passion into a story.

That was what one editor told me after I sent them a story.

You go on. You look at what that teacher said and learn from it. You will never see every error in your work. Do you think King, or any other writer on the bestseller list writes perfect prose in their first draft? They have an editor, and they have readers who help them by pointing out the mistakes that they don't see.

Heck even editors and English majors have editors. I work as an editor, and I have an editor.

On my last novel I had about 10 drafts, it went through my crit group(5 others), two others read it----then I went trough it one more time.

I sent it to friend that does newspaper reviews. She found many mistakes and typos.

How many books have you read and found mistakes, spelling errors, missing words--ect.

It is easy to miss. You are too close to the work and know it too well.

Think of the mistakes as toilet paper stuck to your heel as you come out of the can, embarrassing as all get out. Maybe even devastating if it happened at say a formal dance, wedding ect. But you sure as heck are glad that someone pointed it out.

Learn from what they tell you—and a B isn’t that bad.

The whole process feels a bit hit and miss sometimes, and I was quite attached to the story. I was despairing a bit, not sure how to re-do the pages I cut, but I made myself start writing. When I got done . . . revised it a couple o' times, it was amazing. The story really was MUCH better, and I could tell. It's agonizing, sitting back down to write after an especially harsh criticism, but if you can force yourself (somehow, that's the hard part) to do even just a few paragraphs, it helps to get the creative juices flowing. Then all you can think about it how good THIS draft is going to be.

At least that's how it works for me.

The brutal truth is that some people are not going to like your writing, and not every piece you write should be engraved on a stone tablet for all of history to enjoy. It's ok to be in love with your own writing, but don't carry that love into delusion. That's when reality can become a real drag.

Listen to what your critics are saying. If they are all saying the same thing, you need to change. Don't let ego stand in the way of growth.

I don't know which is worse. But after 30+ rejections on my latest book, I am sending out 15 more sub tomarrow.

I must be nuts.

This is Emily from Titans AE... I have been thinking a lot about this lately, since my piece is next up to review. I hate, hate, hate having my work critiqued. It's facing terribly painful reality, like someone telling me my otherwise perfect child has something wrong that I never noticed before. (I'm really okay with having papers critiqued... when my honors thesis advisor marked my thesis all up, I was okay with it, because I could see that he was right. Papers are more objective...) And it always makes me massively depressed to have work critiqued... so much so that after several bad writing class experiences at BYU (among other reasons) I basically quit writing creatively for the last several years.

I can tell from the comments you write that you know what you're doing. It's just a matter of keeping at it, I think. Because you're 18 and if you push through the devastation of being critiqued, by the time you're 26 (my age) you will be much, much further along than I am right now, since you did not give up the way I did. (I'm back in the game now, though, so you can let me have it next week).

Take care--Emily

Just wanted to stop back in to say I got over it this morning, having thought of a way to fix most (if not all) of the problems with my story. I am so excited to write the thing that I'm having trouble focusing on the other 20,000 projects I have due this week. Gotta wait until Friday!!! Ack!

I didn't understand what he meant until I heard Algis Budrys explain that the purpose of a critique is not to take about what is wrong with a story (your child). The purpose of a critique is to talk about what is wrong with a manuscript (the words on paper).

The difference is that the story is in your head, and it is truly a beautiful child, deserving of all the love and admiration you have in your heart for it.

The manuscript, however, is and always will be a clumsy representation of that beautiful story because it will never get the wonder and glory of your story down in black and white on a flat piece of paper. No matter how good you are as a writer, those words on paper will never be as good as the story in your head.

When you consider that the purpose of a manuscript is to attempt to recreate in the reader's head the experience of the story that is in the writer's head, then you can see that a manuscript is just not going to be able to be very successful.

But a critique can try to help the writer improve the manuscript so that it does the best job possible of conveying that story to the reader.

So when you receive feedback on the manuscript, ask yourself, first of all, will this help the manuscript do a better job of conveying the story to the reader?

If it doesn't, no matter how intelligent the critiquer may be, that critiquer is not helping you and you can ignore the feedback (with two possible exceptions--your grade depends on incorporating the feedback, or the sale of the story depends on incorporating the feedback--in those two cases, you may want to think a while before you decide to ignore the feedback).

There is also the possibility that the feedback will help you create a better story in your head--one even more glorious and beautiful than the one you'd tried to write down on the paper.

No matter what, though, as long as you remember that critiquers are not talking about your beautiful story when they give you their critiques (how can they be?--they can't see into your head), they are only talking about the attempt you made to convey that story in words on paper, you will be able to look at feedback with the proper perspective, and it shouldn't depress you as much as it would if they were talking about your child.