When Criticism Stings

”You’re being a jerk!”

No one in the class moved. All eyes were on our professor, to see how he would respond to the girl who just yelled at him.

Her voice quivered.

”You’re tearing down my work and it isn’t fair.”

Without taking a beat, the professor said, “Am I being unfair? I’m giving you feedback, yes, but it’s to help you.”

It was an investigative journalism class, taught by a seasoned reporter. He was a straight-shooter. A bit prickly, but what he lacked in tact, he made up for with experience.

We’d been working on articles, and that day he asked several of us to write our leads on the whiteboard. A single sentence, arguably the most difficult part of the article to compose. One by one, we took turns. We were bonafide amateurs in the presence of a pro.

Like good teachers do, he didn’t hold back. He wasn’t fazed by someone shouting at him, nor did he tiptoe around our feelings. What he did care about was making us better writers. Which is why I loved his class.

How do you react when someone pushes back on your writing? How you answer that question changes everything…

Uncomfortable Learning

When feedback stings, it’s human nature to recoil. To brush it off. Push back. Spin the narrative in our favor.

Self-protection is a human response, but I wonder how often writers miss out on valuable feedback, simply because it’s uncomfortable. We hide behind frustration, when underneath is a fear of looking into the mirror.

As Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff write in The Coddling of the American Mind,

“Human beings need physical and mental challenges and stressors or we deteriorate. For example, muscles and joints needs stressors to develop properly. Too much rest causes muscles to atrophy, joints to lose range of motion, heart and lung function to decline, and blood clots to form. Without the challenges imposed by gravity, astronauts develop muscle weakness and joint degeneration.”

The point is, you need someone to poke at your words. To push you past the point where, on your own, you’d call it “good enough.” To call out gaps in your thinking and pudge in your sentences.

Sometimes good advice lands more like a sucker punch than a polite suggestion. It’s not initially enjoyable, but over the long haul, it’s fruitful.

The trick is to judge feedback not by the discomfort it causes but by the truth it reveals.

Even if you don’t admire the messenger or the methodology, if you’re fortunate enough to find someone who knows their stuff and cuts the fluff, push through the pain, pick up a pen, and take notes.

To be clear, I’m not saying you should open yourself to cruel or cutting feedback just for the heck of it. But I do wonder what could have happened differently in class that day, if my tearful friend had listened to our professor’s advice, rather than taking it personally.

I wonder what would happen to your writing, and mine, if we embraced criticism as a teacher rather than writing it off as a bully.

The sting will fade, but your learnings will become part of you.

I’m rooting for you.

Will

Will is the founder of Writers Circle, a community to help writers sharpen their skills and publish their work for the glory of Jesus. He is a senior editor at Waterbrook and Multnomah—an imprint of Penguin Random House.