Critique Impact!

Are not they tricky bunch! The critiques, their words are hard to swallow sometimes- not because they are harsh all the time but because they are sweet, too sweet to understand sometimes too!

Critiques are always good, even when they are harsh, there is no reason to feel giddy about harsh criticism because they are not well-wishers, they are just people who are expressing their opinion on your work or venting out own frustration on your work.

When it is too harsh keep it aside, ask a few friends if they think that opinion expressed are right or wrong, or you can simply share it in your blog/facebook page asking for open opinions. In the meantime assess your own work and decide if you think those words are true! If they are then it is honey coated with quinine. Utilize the honey part. Improve your work. If you think that it is not applicable for your work simply ignore that opinion! You are the boss of what you are writing and you know what you want to do with that, no one else knows that better than you!

Just one example, a personal one, I never planned for writing or did much homework before, after writing when I started writing in 2006 [I think] that was my first experience in writing for blogs/sites and I just wrote whatever I felt at that time.

Soon I gathered both type of readers, people who admired my works and a group of people that kept telling me that I first write my things in Bengali/Hindi and then translate it into English so it is full of faults. Well, they could not hoodwink me because I never write my things in my mother tongue, I always write in English, so I being the fortunate one knew dozens of people whose mother tongue is English and I simply asked them if my English was bad, they said no, it is Asian English but not grammatically wrong. We Indians learn British English so Americans often don’t get it, so I did the next best thing that popped up in my mind and had an online test of BBC and came out in flying colors. That rested my confusion, then with time I started noticing how bad average Indian’s English is and started getting the picture, if these people read correct English they will argue their heads off that it is bad English and the English they know is right.

So, don’t follow anyone blindly, not even yourself, test and then decide what is right and what is right for you.