Posts Tagged ‘negative feedback’
Take criticism without cracking
August 17th, 2010
Britain’s official royal poet was in a bit of a snit. Sir John Betjeman
After the poet left in a huff, his agent explained to reporters, “He is very upset that it is being treated as a poem when in fact it was never intended to be. It is a hymn.”
Whatever literary critics and politicians thought, when Betjeman’s “hymn”—sung to a composition by Malcolm Williamson, Master of the Queen’s Music—premiered later at London’s Royal Albert Hall, it was greeted by long and thunderous applause. Clearly the public overruled the critics.
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Can you take criticism?
November 9th, 2009
When I was studying journalism in college, I had one instructor whose opinion mattered more to me than anyone else’s. He was a tremendously talented writing coach with a wry sense of humor—and he didn’t pull his punches.
Occasionally we’d wander to the restaurant across the street from the journalism department and grab a corner table. He’d light a cigarette, lean back, and start critiquing my articles. When he came across a passage that didn’t work, he’d read it aloud … and laugh at my goofy sentence construction. I’d grimace and writhe in my chair, and he’d laugh even harder because he knew I was fighting the urge to throw my drink at him. One day I asked, “Do you laugh like that at all your students?” “No,” he said, “only the ones that can take it.” Taking it wasn’t always easy. But the lessons stuck, and they made me a better writer.