I have already written a chapter on accepting criticism, but one thing I noticed I failed to do in that chapter was actually explain how someone can accept criticism. In fact, most of the chapter was dedicated to providing a story that could help authors identify when they aren't accepting criticism. The final verdict seemed to be that in the face of criticism, just accept it (Plus, there was a discussion about how accepting criticism isn't the same as using criticism).

However, that's considerably easier said than done, because criticism is hard. It digs deep into your psychy, makes you feel worse, and doesn't seem to let go. It's nice just to say that you need to have more self-confidence, but self-confidence doesn't grow on trees, so it's kind of silly to say this. You don't have self-confidence. If you did, then you wouldn't need to be worrying about accepting criticism. You'd already be unabashedly putting your work out there, naked, with a sombrero on your head. No? Just me? Okay then.

My naked sombrero needs aside, accepting criticism requires putting aside your pride, swallowing your self-doubts, and working towards improving your work. To achieve this goal, and in typical fashion with my other chapters, here is another list on five techniques you can use to receive and handle the criticism thrown at you.

This is my first and biggest piece of advice. I originally had thought to base an entire chapter on this subject alone, but took a step back and decided to try to offer a little more. Most critiques you deal with don't know who you are. This is a fact of life. They don't know your personality. So, when they provide criticism, that criticism is focused on the thing they know. The only thing they know is the work you put out. Ergo, the only thing they are criticizing is the work you put out.

This should go without saying that when someone puts a comment on your work, that they are talking only about your work. But let's say they do make an insult aimed at you. They likely don't know you. They are responding to your material with a personal attack, but ultimately, it's the material they have a problem with. So even then, they are criticizing the work, not you. This does not mean I'm suggesting it's okay to attack people personally, but when you are attacked on a personal level, well... don't take it personally.

I think this is a lesson that even accomplished actors, politicians, and directors need to understand. Even famous names like Steven Spielberg is a person who 99.9% of the ones consuming his work do not know him on any personal level. I don't know what he's like. I don't know his kids. I don't even know how he is as a director. All I know is the end product that I consumed.

Now, people will attack Spielberg when he makes a bad movie. But how quickly does the audience change its tune when he makes a good movie? A better example perhaps would be M. Night Shyamalan. He created the Sixth Sense, and it lead people to having very high expectations for him as a director. He made an okay film with Unbreakable, and then his films slowly went to crap.

People were enraged, how could this "great" director make all these not great films. People started to notice his trends. His angle uses. His tendency to always have a twist. He was attacked relentlessly. So relentlessly he even created a film where his would-be film critics act pompously and are the only character to die in the end. But, now he's making good films again. The last few on his list, The Visit... Split... they've been considered decent movies.

And none of that speaks to who M. Night Shyamalan is as a person. He might be a great father. Is he even a father? He might be a fun director. A funny guy. None of this is known. The only thing we know about him is the content he's created. Thus, when someone criticizes him, the only thing they are criticizing is a small aspect of his personality.

Think of the time you spend actually writing. An hour a day? Two hours? How long did that chapter take to write. Ten hours? Twenty? How much of your life was spent making it? The point I'm trying to make is that any given work you put on display only took a relatively very small portion of your life to produce. Even a book only took a few months to a year to write, which is insignificant over the entirety of your lifetime.

Point being, don't let your criticism rule your life. The criticism is part of such a small aspect of your life. In the end, that criticism need only be applied to your writing skill. Perhaps you can feel disappointed when your writing skill isn't what you expected, but this kind of thing changes from writing to writing. The writer of the Sixth Sense then went on to write *shivers* The Last Airbender. Even a GOOD writer is bound to write crap now and then. That doesn't make him stop being a good writer, it just means that some things he wrote worked, and some things didn't.

To you, this means that you need to understand that your work isn't you. You are a person, well rounded and everything. Your writing is something you spend a small portion of your time creating. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't work. Listen to the criticism of that thing, but that thing doesn't reflect you. It doesn't even necessarily reflect your skill. We all have good days and bad days. We all have stories that worked, and stories that sort of just flopped around like fish struggling for breath, desperately waiting for someone to smash it with a hammer to put it out of its misery. Accept that, and you'll find that the criticism goes down a little smoother.

However, even if you can make that distinction, criticism is still criticism, and pride will come in the way when you see your work being slammed by someone. Just because the total work doesn't equal more than a fraction of your life, that doesn't mean you didn't work hard and really try, so criticism can still sting.

That's why you need to take criticism in small bites. In the past, I'd sometimes ask five-six critics in a row to criticize my work. You'd always get a few fluffer nutters who had nothing helpful to say, but then you'd get the guys who would add criticisms. And suddenly, I didn't feel like writing as much because people only want to whine and complain about it.

Sometimes, they'd just post 10-20 comments, picking apart the writing one line at a time (because Wattpad unfortunately (fortunately?) lets you comment on each line. Other times they'd create a bullet point list, snapping at any and every little thing. Half the things don't even make sense, are flat out wrong, or are easily answered if the person just read one more chapter.

But none of that matters, because it feels less like criticism, and more like flaying yourself alive. Each criticism feels like another lash. Maybe the first 2-3 are fine, but the more you get, the sorer it is. Soon, what felt completely tolerable initially becomes unbearable. Every additional comment amplifies the power of all the previous comments. Now you're ready to start crying.

I get it. I get that feeling. I've put myself in that situation sometimes too. Yes, even a 30-year-old man can feel like crying after hearing people tear at his work chapter after chapter.

And so... limit yourself. Don't take all the criticism at once. If you feel like you can't fight the temptation to know what people say, then only ask for one chapter at a time. And if you have someone who is determined to flay you through ever chapter because they're just that helpful (Thanks guy... *whimpers*), do whatever you have to in order to tolerate it.

Read only one chapter a day. Take a break and spend a few days building yourself up. Read it with a friend and have the friend scoff at the critiquer and tell you how stupid he is. Whatever it takes. The point is that you should take your criticism in the amount you can handle. There is no obligation to take it all at once. There is no obligation to take it when you're feeling low. Don't do that to yourself. Take it on your time.

The best thing about the internet and taking criticism? You have the power. Use that power. This criticism is for you, it's for your use, and your benefit, so at the end of the day, when, how, and why you choose to accept it is under your control. Feel that control. Let it flow through you. Let it be apart of you. Feel the power of the force, Luke... *cough* I mean... take charge of your criticism. You're the boss.

I suppose there can be some contention here. Some people may feel criticism comes harsher from the people you know rather than the people you don't know. I think those rules apply more to the very close relatives. You know, the people you trust the most. However, for online friends, I think you can probably handle some criticism from them, even if you decide after they criticize you don't want to be friends with them anymore.

Although I'm not suggesting you make a bunch of friends, let them criticize you, then dump them... I'm just talking about getting to know your critics on a basic level. Share some back and forth. Read their work so you know where they are coming from. Find out, at a minimum, their demographical orientation (age, sex, country of origin) so that you can understand the criticism.

This is something I think everyone fails at when it comes to criticism. People are different, and a female Muslim from India might critique a work differently from a male Christian from France. It may not always be important, but knowing where your critic is coming from can go a long way to knowing why they critiqued in the way that they do.

If you find out your critic is big into romance stories, then you can probably understand why they keep obsessing over the little bit of romance your story has. If they're a scientist, maybe you can get why they get angry every time you get the science wrong. These sort of things matter.

And even putting all of that aside, simply getting to know someone and be able to talk with them in a friendly way can quickly teach you they aren't out to get you. A faceless critic in the crowd, some unknown, judgmental, shadowy figure can feel a lot more ominous when providing you negative criticism than someone who is friendly with you. Plus, when someone is willing to chat with you outside of the book, you can really grasp that the criticism ISN'T aimed at you, it's aimed at your work.

Now, I'm not saying you need to become chummy with every tom, dick, and penis who throw you a comment, but a few of the people whom you can get invested in whom comment and tell you about how they found your book might be worth becoming people you share and continue critiques with. It's all part of being in a community, and having the support of like-minded friends, rather than formless criticism.

So, you've finally settled down on a 2000-character comment and you start reading everything. It seems like your commenter spent 5 paragraphs telling you how crappy your writing is, and maybe a sentence telling you anything you did right. But did they really?

As the kind of critic who tends to do this, I'll simply spell it out. When I find things wrong with a writing, I'll point out when they are wrong, what was wrong, how I think they might be fix, etc... etc... When I find something done right, I simply say "I think this was done well." This has lead to authors in the past being convinced that all I did was criticize their work.

The worst of the bunch won't see me having said anything positive at all. They focus on the negative criticism, to the point that even though there is positive criticism, they don't see it.

This is why you need to do the hardest thing of all. You need to rewrite the point of their criticism. What are they actually telling you is wrong with your work. This includes the positive things along with the negatives things. Just because 5 of 6 paragraphs were dedicated to explaining all the things that bothers them, doesn't mean that you received 5 criticisms and only 1 positive.

It's pretty easy to load a lot of positive criticism into one or two sentences.

"I thought your story started out well. I enjoyed these characters. The plot could be fun at times."

That's three positives in three sentences. However, then I go on.

"But, I found the character of Brony the Pony Boner to be a little in your face. Like, he was such an unlikable character that I didn't even want to read about him. I mean seriously, all he did the entire time was bone ponies. It was pretty unlikable. Like that point when the protagonist was tied to the wall, and then he pulled out his 'toys'. Yeah, I didn't like that scene at all. I would totally rewrite his character. Like, maybe instead of Ponies, he could screw... I don't know, pandas."

That paragraph only held one criticism. But I focused on it a lot. So, it hits you with a greater emotional blow. Even though, when listed out, I said three positive things and one negative thing, if you didn't list it out, you would have convinced yourself that I spent the entire comment raging on your story.

This kind of thing can also show a repeat of criticisms. Perhaps a commenter criticized you messing up they're, their, and there... then later they criticize you using the word irregardless, then later they criticize you using effect instead of affect. Has he given you three different criticisms? Not really... he's complaining about your grammar, specifically your tendency to write the incorrect form of words, but that really can be summed up as one criticism.

And people like me tend to go on tirades. If I find something that annoys me, I could dedicate 2-3 paragraphs whining about it and giving it examples. However, at the end, it's only a single criticism. It's only one thing I'm saying you did wrong. It might be something that permeates the chapter, it might be something that is my pet peeve, but it's still a single thing that can potentially be fixed.

I think it's always good advice to write what the criticism actually is. Categorize it. And not just the criticism from one person, but the criticism from all of your critiques. Combine them. You may find every critique is really having the same criticism, even if they word it in different ways, and obsess about different parts of the story, it could all be the root cause. Maybe this scene set this guy off and that scene set that guy off, but if both have a problem with the antagonist... you can see the problem with the story was really just a poor written antagonist... who bones ponies.

Pride. It's a heck of thing. Just today, I went out to eat and the guy handling my bill refused to take a coupon for arbitrary reasons that wouldn't have bothered someone else. I was pissed, so I snapped at him. Cussed a few times in front of my kids just to make me look like the worst parent. About twenty minutes later, after I had eaten, I went back up to the poor guy and apologized.

Don't get me wrong, I still think I am in the right. I'm still a little pissed he wouldn't take my coupon. I was pissed all the way up to the point I apologized, but I did apologize, because I don't think anyone should be making anyone else's day just a little bit crappier when they have the good grace not to. I didn't control my emotions when my plans changed, but I could always go back when I cooled down a bit and show proper etiquette.

I wrote an entire chapter on Wattpad etiquette, and I made sure to mention that it's never a good idea to argue with your commenters. Now... I've defended my work, and I think every writer has a right to defend their work. The critic can learn just as much from the experience as the writer in these sorts of situations. So, responding, answering questions, and explaining your actions is NOT arguing, no matter how much some certain critiquers may think it is... I'm looking at you, Chad.

But arseholes like Chad aside, you typically don't want to make it a habit of getting into arguments with your critics. At no point should you sent them a post telling them you're quitting now, or how decimated their posts made you feel. Don't try to fight them, don't try to guilt them.

If emotions run high, sit on it for a couple of days, maybe even a week. They can wait. You don't have to respond to your criticism the day you read it. Waiting seven days to respond is way better than leaving heartfelt, passive aggressive angry comments about how you're totally trying and they were totally mean and unfair.

But in the end, if you don't need them to clarify their criticism, and you don't feel the need to clarify your work towards their criticism, then the only thing you should leave them is a polite thank you.

Mind you, I'm suggesting you should leave them something. Nothing isn't a good option. It's better than passive aggressive, but it's still kind of jerkish to leave them hanging. I've had people who I've left criticism for never make a single response to that criticism, and at the very least I considered it mildly annoying.

But if you honestly don't like their criticism, even if you're angry at it, swallow your own pride, suck it up, and tell them you appreciate their criticism, and you'll take a look at it. That's it.

This isn't just the polite thing to do, this is the adult thing to do. Teenagers, take extra note. You want to be seen as adult or adult-like... this is one of those steps. When you can put aside your grievances and shake the hand of someone you hate and be nice, just because it's the thing you need to do to move forward, that's a true sign of growing up. Why do you think all the competitions usually end in exchanging "good game" with your opponents. It's preparing you for this kind of thing. This ability to swallow your pride.

And after you do all that? After you pm them thanking them for their helpful critique? After you've read the critique, and jotted down both the positive and negative things the critique suggests you can improve on? After this person has torn you down, ravaged you soul, and obliterated your self-esteem?

Delete that crap.

Delete the comments/pm... and move on. Don't dwell on it. Criticism is, and always should be, a fleeting thing. What you do after you've accepted it? Well, that's up to you. I suggest removing your pants and reaching for your sombrero.