Growing as a Writer Travis Radford

Growing as a Writer

Travis Radford @travis_radfird1

Travis Radford recalls some not-so-fond memories from high school and shares some thoughts on how criticism can be used for your own good.

If I could only use three words to describe how I’ve grown as a writer, they’d be: criticism and feedback. But seeing as I have approximately four hundred, I’ll expand a little more on that. Criticism can be difficult to hear, especially when Mr McDonnell, your grade eight history teacher, pretends to choke to death on how poorly your writing flows. This was my first real encounter with criticism, and I remember it vividly.

Grade eight me was about to leave history class, when my teacher said, “no, not you.” I was quite proud of my work, so naturally assumed he wanted to congratulate me personally, without making the other kids feel bad for their inferior writing skills.

“Do you know what commas are?” he said straight away. Before I had time to answer, he began reading my work aloud (this is actually a really useful way to check if your work flows), mockingly taking exaggerated breaths to mark the absence of each comma or full stop. The previous day I had submitted a report on the Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi. We had to write around three hundred words on his life and untimely death (from drinking mercury he ironically thought would make him immortal). I wrote three hundred words with only one full stop - right at the very end. With each breath he drew, my pride slowly died, as I wondered if this was it. Would I ever come back from this?

What I think is important, and what helped grade eight me to come back from this, was to first of all change the way I thought about criticism. Thinking of it as an attack on your work is very one-dimensional, equivalent to drinking a cool glass of mercury – your writing will never improve! Feedback is a kinder word, without the same negative connotations. If you consider your writing as a product, being beta tested by readers for feedback, it’s easier to take criticism as constructive, rather than destructive. Ultimately criticism hurts and it never stops hurting but without taking that first piece of advice on board maybe I’d still be writing exhausting sentences like this that seem to carry on and on and on without any fragmentation from commas or full stops except At. The. Very. End.