MathiasCavanaugh.com

One thing all authors should do is get feedback on their work. But, I will be honest with you, other authors can be one of the worst sources for feedback. I don’t know if they do it on purpose or subliminally, but I suspect it is a little of both when they give petty and meaningless critiques.

Not all are like this. Thank God!

But when I submitted one of my recent works to a group of fellow writers for critiquing, I got to experience those that are so shallow. One fellow author offered me no real critique of my work but instead insisted, repeatedly, that I was telling the story from the wrong point of view. When another author chimed in and told him he was being ridiculous in his critique and that the POV was fine, he began insisting that I use certain other words instead of the words I had chosen in a seemingly random fashion. Another author called that “silly”, saying that there was nothing inherently wrong with my word choices which were now under criticism.

After the whole event I learned that the noisy, other author critic was someone who was getting very bitter at not having been published in nearly a decade of trying. He often tries to change other authors into himself in terms of style. His style is not bad. But it just is not me.

Thankfully though the whole experience did yield some positive things that I was able to take away from it. But one thing I definitely learned is that other authors are not always good sources of critique.