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When you first allow someone else to critique your work, you may need to be prepared for uncomfortable criticisms. You donņt have to blindly accept every comment or suggestion, and you should by all means defend your writing. But you should also try to accept criticism calmly in the first instance, and try to understand the other personņs viewpoint. Once you are more adept at accepting criticism, you will be in a better position to look at feedback objectively and, if necessary, reject it. In some cases the comments may be extremely subjective, if not prejudiced. For example, if a reviewer writes "I have always hated stories about cats" it is not very helpful. But unbiased comments, particularly drawing attention to technical errors, will help improve the quality of your writing, and constructive comments may send you in a completely new and fruitful direction.
Be courteous and thank commentators for their feedback, even if you do not agree with it. At all costs avoid getting into "flame wars" where a trivial point is debated with increasingly vitriolic language.
Donņt forget that people connected to you, such as relatives or friends, may pull their punches when they comment on your work, or they might err on the side of compliment. Whilst encouragement is a good thing, and you should certainly use it to spur on your enthusiasm, you must also take any over-enthusiastic comments with a pinch of salt. The same applies to people or representatives of organisations who might want to get some business from you - you must be realistic and at least consider the possibility that they may be trying to flatter you, however much your ego makes you long to take their comments at face value.
You must also be prepared to deal with the occasional nutcase out there. Somebody might be hypersensitive to some issue or you may have accidentally offended them, or they may just be a bit loony. If you are only accepting comments from signed-in users you can easily block them out, delete all their comments, and you need never hear from them again. |