A good friend of mine got some positive critiques for her writing. Along with the praise, she collected a lot of constructive advice on how to make her work better. Then she came to me and said, "How do I make all these changes? I feel overwhelmed."
I sympathize with her challenging situation and thought I'd share some ideas here about what to do after you receive a critique:
1. Mull the advice over. Just because you have new ideas, that doesn't mean you have to go making fast, spontaneous changes. Think for a while. Get comfortable with the critique and then move forward with editing when you know where you're going.
2. Make a bulleted list of all the suggestions you receive. (If you belong to a critique group, you may have dozens or even hundreds of suggestions. Once you have a list of individual ideas, rank them. Which ones do you like, which ones will be fun to incorporate into your work, and which one are just picky and need to be discarded?
3. When you're ready to edit, claim all the editing ideas you plan to use as your own. They no longer belong to an expert or a friend or a rival. They are yours and you can do whatever you like with them. If they work, wonderful. If not, they can be discarded like all your other ideas.
How do you proceed when you receive a critique? Do you have any advice on how to find a good critique partner? As always, I'd love to hear from you.
Until next time, I wish you joy in all your writing.
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