Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Writing.com�s Greatest Teaching: Accepting Critiques

First, I have to say I love all writers. I know from personal experience that their work is the result of blood, sweat, and tears, no pun intended to any musical group. I know they are probably the nicest people walking the face or the earth. But do they all understand what a critique is?

A critique or a review is an analysis and an evaluation of a text. To critique means evaluating both the negative and positive aspects of a piece.

In a critique of a fictional or non-fictional piece, a short summary is important, but it is not the main feature of a review; although, sometimes you have to write the entire summary to prove a point or show that the ending has a flaw, especially in a novel’s review. Although a critique helps the readers to gain an understanding of the text, it also shows the personal viewpoint of the reader/reviewer. As tastes differ, so do people who are nice enough to offer their opinions.

In my opinion, greatest benefit of being a Writing.com member is the achievement of accepting positive or negative reviews equally, because in Writing.com, serious people who write reviews or critiques do it to help the members, and our writers take or leave the suggestions of fellow writers, still accepting and respecting the reviewers’ ideas.

It isn't that way, everywhere else. Because I have a good customer-merchant relationship with Amazon, I post my reviews for the books I have read on their site, and Amazon has been very gracious.

Not so felt a first-novel author and her friends of the last book I reviewed a few days ago. I bought and read her book that had received all five stars, but from my point of view, the plot of the story had several holes in it. Moreover, I found the story to be extremely melodramatic and not thoroughly researched. I gave the book three stars and showed what I thought to be lacking. Plus, I repeatedly used words like, “I felt” I believe” etc., to show that what I wrote was my personal opinion.

The comments I received from the author’s friends were shocking. One of them even accused me of being disrespectful to the author, among other things. But then, I received a comment from the author herself. It was polite enough, but it showed that she was extremely disturbed. So I deleted my review. Far be it from me to disturb a new author.

This experience made me appreciate even more of what I have come to love about Writing.com: This community’s give-and-take that makes better writers of us in very many ways, but especially in respecting others' opinions and taking negative and positive criticism with equal appreciation. We learn here to take what we can use from each review and disregard what does not help us.

In Writing.com, we all learn from our mistakes, be it in writing or reviewing, and this learning shows in the works of the WdC authors who publish their work.

Review on, Writing .com members. You're the best!