Criticism Week Day Three: All Writers Need Polishing

The pain of criticism is often connected to unrealistic expectations of yourself. If you’re experiencing feedback as a statement of your ability, you’re probably expecting too much from yourself. Some writers spend years writing and editing their work before publication. Many of the greats were rejected in the beginning. Some of the best poets degenerated into periods of horrible writing.

When you make a coffee table, you don’t abandon it once all the pieces are glued together. This thing needs polishing. It must be covered with a stain and varnish. Writing is the same. Just because you got everything together, doesn’t mean it’s polished, and let me tell you a secret—even the best writers rely on others to do that polishing.

Ezra Pound helped T.S. Eliot. The magical realists in Rushdie’s early era relied on one another for polishing. Hemingway used Maxwell Perkins. Perkins helped F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ted Hughes mentored Sylvia Plath. Polishing doesn’t come naturally to all of us. If you required a lot of editing, it’s not because you’re an awful writer. It’s because ALL writers need polishing, often with someone else’s help.

J.M. Coetzee famously suggested writers develop some detachment during the editing process. This works. I use the strategy myself. You simply gather your emotions and stack them in a different room. You use editing as a technical process, always remembering that everyone needs it.

This doesn’t make you a failure. It makes you normal.

It’s easy to become disheartened, but try to compartmentalize that response. It’s based on the lie that all good writers produce perfect work on the first draft. They do not.

I can’t write well today. That’s because I’m normal. It happens.

I went through a few years of writing horribly. D’you know what I did next? Learned. Tried and tried and tried until I found my way off the trash heap. You can do this. You’re no different from other writers in that sense. Stop expecting yourself to be perfect.