I sent an email a week or so ago about how important it is for writers to get actual feedback on their work. Now, I want to talk about how to handle feedback as a writer.

It’s so important to know yourself as a writer. I can not stress this enough. Knowing yourself is the key to filtering feedback.

What is your goal with your stories? Who is your audience? What is your writing style? What are you open or not open to when it comes to feedback? Knowing the answer to those questions creates your very own feedback filter.

There’s a lot of talk in the writing community that a writing degree isn’t a requirement to be a writer, and they’re right. But it sure does help. It helps a ton. As someome with a literature, creative writing & publishing BA, it’s worth its weight in gold. One of the main benefits of pursuing that program was that it helped me hone my voice as a writer, and voice is probably the most important thing authors need to hone in on.

I had to sit through semesters of people publicly critiquing my work on a panel, while I was present, and I wasn’t allowed to say anything, or respond when they were through, nothing. My only option was to listen to their feedback, even if they were horrendously rude, or plain wrong.

It helped me truly grasp on to the fact that everyone comes into contact with my work with their own perspectives, interests, interpretations, and most importantly, projections. I got every kind of feedback imaginable. That my writing was too plain, too pretentious, too predictable, everything. And through all those sessions, I learned that the only thing I could control, was my intentions for the piece of work.

As long as I knew my intentions, and I felt that I did my best with bringing that across in my work, it didn’t matter what the public response was. I’m not supposed to be taking on what everyone else says.

Filtering the feedback we get on our work is important because it helps us determine whether one element or another is working. Sometimes, when someone points out a character that’s too weak, unlikeable, or a paragraph isn’t working, that was exactly the intention behind the decision you made to bring it across that way.

Other times, they’re so far off they don’t even know what’s going on. But we’re the ones in control of what we take on, and what we ignore. Don’t be afraid to ignore unhelpful feedback, even if you asked for it. Whether in writing, or in the wider sphere of life, you’re in control of what you let define your work.