So joining an MFA program has, no surprise, sucked up a lot of my time in the last couple of months, but I think I’m going to try to start sharing out some of what I’m doing in my classes to the blog. This wasn’t technically an assignment, but we’re talking a lot about workshopping and feedback in my class, and I’m also starting to get feedback on my self-published novel. Sometimes, I find myself so nervous about how people will react that I almost start to wonder if I should be publishing – which is nonsense. So I decided to write up a little affirmation/manifesto to help myself deal with the reactions to my work and I thought I’d share it here.
So here it goes….
Most people are not going to be interested in or love your work. That is fine and normal and is not a judgement on whether or not you should do the work. It is also not a judgement on your talent, potential, or worth as a human. (It’s not a judgement on them either.)
Think about the things you enjoy, and that are wildly popular, like Star Wars or Harry Potter or Shakespeare’s sonnets, and remember that even in those cases there are millions of people who don’t care about them, or think they are flawed, or even think they are garbage.
Unless you’ve been hurtful, someone having a negative, or indifferent, reaction to your work only matters when it can serve to make your work better. In fact, your work can’t get better unless you know where you need to improve. So again, the only reason negative feedback should matter to you is to use it to improve what you do – beyond that, ignore it, it genuinely does not matter.
Jenel Alan 