It never hurts to have people review your work, even if it is not a final draft. There are two things you have to remember. One is that everyone has their opinion and you have to listen to their opinion but don’t necessarily have to agree or act upon it. Two is that criticism is a part of the writing life so don’t get upset when people are uncomplimentary about your work.
I have some wonderful people who read my work. Some I share with pretty regularly and they give me varying degrees of critique. Other times I look to people I consider experts in their fields and consult them. My focus lately has been children’s material – poetry, books, short stories. So I asked my sister, Aimee, who is a reading specialist for 30 years to read over a few of my offerings.
She was very gentle and kind but at the same time gave me an amazing critique on several items I’m working on. I woke up this morning with a complete rewrite for one of them. I’ll be working on that later.
One of the stories I sent to her got turned down which made me very sad because I thought it was a great story. She had a different take on it though. I listened to her viewpoint and I’ll be reworking it. I might even send the reworked piece back to the publisher to see if they like it better.
Her view point made me get around my emotional attachment to the piece and look at it objectively. This is important for good marketing of work. I need to have a clear and unemotional look at each of my pieces. I know some of the stuff I have written is crap. I also know some of it is outstanding. I just have to keep the emotions out of the work so I can make good decisions on which is which…
To all my reviewers… thank you for all your input and assistance. It helps me see my work from other viewpoints and perspectives. This makes me a better writer…