Accepting and integrating constructive criticism is crucial to improving your writing. It’s also one of the hardest things to get right. 

When you’re first starting out, especially if you started creative writing in childhood, there’s nothing more painful than someone telling you that your work is anything less than genius. Perhaps you feel every note like a punch to the gut, every suggestion a deep insult. Over time, though, you can learn how satisfying it is to implement thoughtful critique and see your work improve in front of your eyes. Then you can return the favor for others and experience the point of view of someone who likes and respects their fellow writer and only wants to help them achieve their vision. 

But is taking every piece of criticism its own problem? Is there a point when you cross a line and have no backbone as a writer, no perspective of your own? 

Chasing the Trends

It makes sense, if you’re trying to sell your book, to try and write something that people will buy. There’s a way to do that mindfully, which means reading extensively in your chosen genre and making sure the story that lives in your brain is translating well to your readers. That’s a perfectly sensible approach, one that will serve you well as you further develop your intuition around how to revise your writing.

The unhealthy version of this mindset is writing something not because you find the story compelling or think people would like it but because you think it will sell. Think back to a few years ago when vampires were all the rage. You wouldn’t advise someone writing literary fiction about a couple contemplating divorce to make the characters vampires because “that’s what people want.” So don’t shoehorn a romance plot into your traditional epic fantasy because you think you have to. 

If you’re a traditionally published author, or aspire to be, this pressure might even come from your editors or agent. If they suggest that maybe your love story subplot is a bit underdeveloped and make note of the popularity of fantasy romance, that’s not necessarily bad advice, but you’re still allowed to trust your gut. Have a real conversation with your colleagues about what you think works in your story and what doesn’t, and if they’re good at their jobs, they’ll respect your viewpoint. 

Chasing Perfection

When you watch the Olympics, you’ll see a lot of experts weigh in on what the judges are looking for when they grade performances. How many turns does the figure skater need to make? Where is the gymnast supposed to land? Which archer got their arrow closest to the bull’s-eye? 

Writing isn’t clear-cut like that, though. There’s no objective way to say, with specificity, what makes your book finished, and there’s absolutely no way of saying it’s “perfect.” If you send your work out to a lot of people for critique, there might be things most of them agree on, there might be things that none of them bring up as an issue, but you’re never going to wake up to an inbox full of people saying, “This is perfect and finished, and if you publish it today, everyone who reads it will love it.” 

It’s good to keep working toward improvement and to recognize that you’ll need to do more than fix a few typos to make a rough draft into a final draft. But there will come a time when you, and only you, have to make the call that you’re putting your pencil down, and that might be a point when there are still people telling you there’s more to be done. 

Chasing Approval

If you’ve done the hard work of learning to accept criticism without having a crisis of confidence, you’ll run up against a new barrier when making the decision to call your book “done,” even when a beta reader disagrees with you. And unlike the journey of accepting criticism of your work, this new challenge is really about accepting criticism of you personally. Because if someone tells you they think you need to go through another round of edits before submitting to your independent publisher or to literary agents, and you say no, they’ll think you have poor judgment about implementing criticism. Right?

Well, probably not. 

Other people are simply not thinking about you as much as you think. That person has a million other things on their mind, and it’s very unlikely that they will take it personally if you don’t do exactly what they told you to do in their feedback. Think about it. If you were in that position, would you treat your writer friend with scorn and derision? Or would you shrug, figure they were making a well-informed choice for themselves, and go on with your day? Probably the latter. 

If someone really does hold it against you that you don’t center your writing around pleasing them, then you might also make the call to cut that person out of your writing critique circle. 

Keep It Moving

When you work so hard on something and have high aspirations for it, it’s natural to try and cling to some kind of external, objective marker that will signify your success. But the hard truth is that there’s no way to know whether you’ve crossed the line from refusing to acknowledge room for growth to willing to sell yourself out for someone else’s praise. And that’s a good thing! 

Life is full of gray areas, and picking and choosing how—or if—to implement critique is one of them. Make a call, see how it makes you feel, and try not to agonize. Writing is hard enough as it is; there’s no need to make it worse by being too hard on yourself.

Chelsea Ennen is a writer living in Brooklyn with her husband and her dog. When not writing or reading, she is a fiber and textile artist who sews, knits, crochets, weaves, and spins.