Criticism is your weapon and why you should make use of it.
When it comes to creative work and writing you either learn to deal with criticism and develop a thick skin for it or you perish.
As a writer whatever you do, you are doing for people. You are doing to be recognized for your skill and your gift and by that people hold a little power over you.
Like it or not, that is the life every writer signed up for. No writer writes for themselves and wants to sit down reading their writing over and over again with a smile on their face.
When you sit down to put your ideas down you are doing this because you want a stranger somewhere to take time out of their day and read the things you write with a smile on their face
That is the first goal of every writer. We are here to share and share too much of ourselves. In sharing too much of ourselves we are bound to come upon criticism.
If you want to live a safe and secure life, try not to create something for humanity. Keep to yourself and enjoy the privacy of being a nobody but as long as you have decided to share, be ready to be punctured now and then.
Criticism is not the problem but being too attached to it is. As a writer, you need to understand that as long as you wake up and share a piece of you with the world people will always have something to say about that.
There will always be something to talk about in your writing but not everything you are going to entertain or let define you.
Secondly, criticism allows you to get an objective opinion into your writing. Some criticism works and serves as feedback. You can only see the sense in it if you are open-minded and humble enough to want to learn.
Discernment is a strength you need to acquire as a writer. You need to be able to differentiate a criticism that hurts your writing process from a criticism that enables your writing process. It is like enjoying the fruit and throwing away the seeds.
Criticism is every writer’s weapon if they can be unattached to it. You have to learn to see opinions for what it is.
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