Constructive criticism

Have you ever had someone tell you that something you wrote was pretty much a piece of junk? Maybe they didn’t quite use such harsh words, but we’ve all been subject to a little criticism of our written work, right? In school, we were always being graded on how well we conveyed a message and yet also infused some of our own personal flair into a story. In the professional world, we don’t get grades for our work, but we are always being “graded” by our readers.

I was writing an article for the summer issue of our magazine about an alumnus who recently received a prestigious award for computer science. I knew it wasn’t going to be a simple task – the topic was computer science and mobile technology, and I somehow had to translate the story into words that anyone could understand. And I was working on a tight deadline that also coincided with the end of the school year, which is perhaps one of the busiest times of the year for the communications office.

I wanted to write the best article that I possibly could, but with all the end-of-the-year stress bearing down on me, I simply gave it a good effort and sent the draft off to the subject of the article for him to fact-check.

His response was thoughtfully critical of my writing, and I have to thank him for that. His words were, “The article itself feels a little disjointed.” I read it as, “The article’s all out of whack; it needs to be re-organized and re-written.”

I knew he was right. When I had written the article, my main goal was my deadline. But I should have been focused on my readers. It didn’t matter if I made my deadline or not if no one was going to be interested enough to read the article. I filled up my coffee mug and got back to work on the article. It didn’t take much work, just some re-arranging paragraphs and clarifying a few items, and all of a sudden, it started to sound like a cohesive story.

I sent the revised version off to my interviewee, and he responded, “I like this a lot better.”

Because I was open to taking some criticism from my interviewee, I wrote a much more interesting story that I’m proud to have published in our school magazine.

Here are some tips I learned from my experience:

• Remember not to be selfish in your writing.
• Satisfy your readers first and deadline second.
• Ask others to read your work and provide honest feedback.
• If someone criticizes your work, take that as an opportunity for improvement.

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