Recently someone stuck a comment on the blog about being a smart ass - referring to me I guess.  A comment is one source of reader feedback and in this case, I think it was positive as I am a smart ass and whatever my standard of writing, I got under someone’s skin enough to motivate them to comment. 

No comment is bad comment just as with publicity.

More constructively, using feedback from your readers will help you understand what you are getting right and what you are doing wrong.  This applies whether you are engaged in writing for profit or pleasure as though you may be a leader in the community of the written word, the point of putting something onto paper is to get people to read it, hopefully to think about it and be entertained or sold enough to come back for more.

Ocassionally I throw a piece of work to my ex wife and knowing her to be the no-holds barred critic of me in all aspects of my life that she is, I can be assured of an incisive opinion.  This is not some sort of self-flagellating exercise or because I like being told my work is rubbish and lacking in something.  The best results I have produced in my work have been achieved after someone has pulled my draft to pieces and given me reasons why. 

I never liked pulling literature to pieces when I was a schoolboy in those interminably dull English lessons.  I hated it in fact, not because I was not interested in the book but because it destroyed something of the tale for me; I never forgave my English teacher Mr Taylor for putting me through The Chrysalids by John Wyndham as before I had loved his book and afterwards could not bring myself to read it again, even to this day.

This sounds like a contradiction in terms between how I want my work read and how I read other peoples.  This is the difference between ERH as a reader and ERH as a writer.  I am unable to pull my own work to pieces because I write it - I’m too close to the subject matter to be objective enough.   Getting your readers to tell you why they read your work, followed your message and acted upon it, or not, is something that is invaluable if you are looking to improve your work product. 

Critics are always available, and there are a lot of doomsayers and negative heads that are only too eager to take a pop at you or your work. 

Great! 

Let these people lose on your product because if you keep a cool head, you can learn a lot from what is being said whether it is constructive or not.  I actually prefer the negative feedback and the reason is because if they have a point, and you keep an open mind, you can learn far more from someone being cruel than from someone paying you a compliment.

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