I can handle negative feedback, and in general, I think of myself as someone who takes criticism really well. After all, getting and giving feedback on writing is pretty much what I do for a living. I’m a criticism expert.
And yet, you never quite know when receiving negative feedback will hit you right in the solar plexus. It’s so easy to hear just the negative and never learn from it. But even the harshest and cutting criticism or rejection has a lesson for you. It might even get you published.
“What is she going on about?” you may be wondering.
Last year I wrote a piece for Ozy about the time I was in Panama catching frogs with Lila. She was only four years old then, and it involved boat rides, serial killers and running around in the rain jumping after poisonous frogs.
It was a good story.
It was a good story that started with a rejected pitch along with some rather negative responses from the editor. Let’s call him G.
My original pitch focused on the time I went to the first Burning Man in Argentina.
I’m pretty sure seeing “Argentina’s first Burning Man” caught the editor’s eye. It’s not the kind of pitch you’d see often, since there weren’t many English speakers there.
His email went something like this:
I’m looking for stories that have an actual beginning, middle and end and something happens in between. This is very shoe-gazey. But I like your writing. Got any other stories?
Ugh. What a response!
He didn’t like my pitch. He accused me of being too in my head. Which, yeah, it’s true, but who the hell is he to say it? And why not just say “No thanks, I’ll pass” instead of insulting me.
That was my first reaction.
I wanted to write something back equally snarky.
I wanted to crawl into my bed and pretend it didn’t happen.
I wanted to indignantly let him know there was no need to be a jerk.
Three cheers for negative feedback
Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen wrote an incredible book called Thanks For the Feedback. I highly recommend it. Among other things, they talk about the two stages of responding to feedback.
Stage one: You receive feedback and have a reaction.
Stage two: You decide what to do with the feedback and respond.
The reaction can be angry, thoughtful, hurtful, grateful and any other number of emotions, but it’s your response that really matters. Your response to even the most negative feedback makes the difference between sabotaging yourself or learning something new.
When you receive negative or hard to hear feedback, think about it and then decide rationally how you want to address it. You don’t have to take the feedback as gospel, but you can just for a moment entertain the idea and see if it holds any value. Then when you respond, you respond with a level head and in a way that moves you closer to your objective and not out of anger or hurt.
Going back to my shoe-gazey quote
My initial emotional reaction to G’s comments derailed me from what I actually wanted. Any of my knee-jerk reactions would have led me farther from my ultimate goal of writing, being published and getting paid.
Once I took a step back from emotion, I could see the part of G’s response I most needed to know. Here was an editor literally telling me that he liked my writing and the way I told stories.
He wanted more.
Did you know the number one reason people don’t have pitches accepted by editors? Because they don’t write and send them. They let fear or some other negative emotion stop them from writing.
I took a deep breath, refined my thinking and re-pitched.
Feedback is not a slam on your work. It’s not a statement about your writing. It’s the nature of the writing business.
The more I worked with G, the more I saw how much his feedback helped my writing. He was straightforward and often cutting but always useful. While I still bristle at his advice sometimes, his ideas always improved my writing.
When not to listen to feedback
When feedback puts you down on a personal level. When it says you’re wrong, bad, annoying, pointless or any other adjectives that posit a quality value to you or your writing but without offering any way to improve and grow.
When the feedback just leaves you feeling bad and without any recourse to change, the feedback is not worth having. Those are the times you choose to recognize the feedback for what it is and move on with your life.
It’s not easy.
It takes practice.
Ultimately, feedback is crucial for growing as a writer and as a human being. All of us, each and every human being on earth does amazing things and also awful things. We are each expert at some things. We suck at others.
That’s just how it is. The key is to reach out to others, find out where we can improve our writing, ourselves, our lives.
