Loving the Red Pencil

In high school I hated when homework assignments were given back to me with red pencil marks on them. At the time that meant only one thing to me – my work was not that of a budding genius. Rather it was filled with mistakes. I was no good. I was a failure.

The person who said, "Perception is reality," was right. Instead of loving the red pencil marks I looked them as negative signs. I took them very personally. When I kept getting them, I gave up.

Maturity came many years later, along with it came a more positive attitude. It was when taking a night class in writing I got a paper back with a lot of red pencil marks on it. I appreciated that, because it finally showed me what I was doing wrong. Even better were the notes that explained my problem areas and even made suggestions.

The teacher of that class became a good friend. I think it had something to do with my openness to having my work criticized. It was constructive criticism that I had finally learned to embrace. Without it I would have kept writing things that were destined for rejection. By accepting the criticism and learning from it I was able to truly begin my career in writing.

A writer also learns to go with their gut on some things. It's a fine line knowing what criticism received is worth making a change, and what things are best left alone. I find that very often it is a compromise. An example: the red pencil notes tell me that my sentence is grammatically incorrect. If the sentence happens to be a quotation, I may decide the character speaking that sentence is not supposed to speak in proper English. If that character is say a lawyer versus a young child, I may decide to clean up the grammar.

Only the person writing knows for certain what should be changed and what should not. A writer must learn to determine which suggestions to take and which to ignore. As I said above, it is often a compromise. Just remember, never compromise what you feel strongly about. On the other hand, if the same story is rejected over and over, it may be time to take that advice.