{"id":7865,"date":"2013-03-05T06:00:21","date_gmt":"2013-03-05T12:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=7865"},"modified":"2013-03-05T06:00:21","modified_gmt":"2013-03-05T12:00:21","slug":"the-phases-of-critique-and-rejection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=7865","title":{"rendered":"The Phases of Critique and Rejection"},"content":{"rendered":"

Disclaimer: all of these statements are based on my own experience. Not everyone will experience all of these phases (although I\u2019m guessing most people will or have experienced at least one or two of them!)<\/em><\/p>\n

The Phases of Critique<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Too shy to ask<\/em>. You want desperately for people to read your work and praise it, but on the off chance it actually sucks, you keep it close to your chest and only share with people like your mom, who has to say she likes it even if she doesn\u2019t. You can\u2019t handle critique or rejection at this stage.<\/li>\n
  2. Shy but curious<\/em>. Over time, you realize your Mom\u2019s feedback isn\u2019t enough for you. You\u2019re ready for someone else to tell you it\u2019s good stuff, so you get over your fear of negative feedback and put it out there. Maybe to other friends, writing friends, or maybe you take a creative writing class.<\/li>\n
  3. Burned<\/em>. You finally put yourself out there, and the results were less than satisfactory. People gave you mediocre praise, or worse, offered suggestions for improvement. You feel like your baby is under attack, and you clutch it protectively to your chest, wondering what the hell they even know anyway. You stew for weeks, months, or years.<\/li>\n
  4. Determined<\/em>. Finally, you get over the mean things people said about your blood, sweat, and tears. You\u2019ve had some space from it since writing it, and you can see that maybe people weren\u2019t crazy when they made suggestions on how to improve it. So you try again. You write something better, fixing all the mistakes you made in the last thing you wrote. You send it back out there for people to read. Some like it, some don\u2019t, some offer suggestions, but this time it doesn\u2019t hurt as much. So you try again. And keep trying.<\/li>\n
  5. Ready<\/em>. You no longer flinch at the prospect of other people reading your work. At this point, you\u2019ve received enough feedback that you know what to listen to and what to discard, and you\u2019ve honed your craft so you\u2019re actually decently good, and people aside from your Mom have told you this. At this point, you feel like you\u2019re not just doing it for fun anymore, you might actually like to put your work out there for actual readers. So you begin submitting to publishers\/agents.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    This leads to the Phases of Rejection.<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Submission<\/em>: almost pee your pants when you hit submit. Obsessively check inbox for response from publisher, even if wait time is upwards of three to six months.<\/li>\n
    2. Rejection<\/em>: when you finally get that long-expected \u201cno thanks,\u201d you shrug it off and say it\u2019s no big deal. Tell yourself all sorts of platitudes like \u201cit wasn\u2019t right for them\u201d or \u201cbetter luck next time\u201d so you don\u2019t fall into a horrible depression.<\/li>\n
    3. Fall into a horrible depression<\/em>. Wonder if you should even call yourself a writer. Break up with writing for days or weeks or months.<\/li>\n
    4. Acceptance<\/em>. Finally, after days or weeks or months, you shake off the depression. You realize you are a good writer, and that all the platitudes you told yourself are actually true, not just banal words to ease the sting of rejection. So you buck up your courage, and try again. And keep trying. And hope that maybe someday, when the timing is right, the response will actually be acceptance, not rejection. And it will.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Disclaimer: all of these statements are based on my own experience. Not everyone will experience all of these phases (although I\u2019m guessing most people will or have experienced at least one or two of them!) The Phases of Critique Too shy to ask. You want desperately for people to read your work and praise it, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[239,833],"class_list":["post-7865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writers-life","tag-critique","tag-phases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7865\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}