Taking Advice and Criticism

I have always been plagued by indecisiveness. If there is a choice of more than one, it can cripple me to the point of missing out; I dither in a standstill and watch the opportunity pass me by. My Mum knows this well, and would often make decisions for me when I was younger, such as 'What drink would you like?' at the restaurant - Coke or lemonade? She would choose for me. Consequently, I would then suddenly arrive at my own decision - the opposite. I'm like that too, you see.

So, it didn't help much when my Mum told me, as a child, that I could grow up to be whatever I wanted. That offered more choices than my mind was able to accommodate, and resulted in years of hesitant murmurings and frequent changes of my future occupation. I also took to a wide range of hobbies, some lasting only moments while others had the longevity to survive through to my adult years.

I am still unsure what I want to be. I work as a programmer analyst, writing and fixing programs. It is sometimes fun, almost always challenging, and something I have been interested in for many years. However, it can be dull, tedious and laborious, and leaves me feeling empty and unsatisfied.

I have a creative side, which I try to nurture. That is the main point of starting this blog, actually. I like to write, partly for escapism but mainly for anti-drab therapy. As with most creative endeavours, it requires an audience to fulfill its purpose.

I read a few blogs. Some are to do with hobbies, some are the oft-neglected pages of my favourite authors. I follow Nik Vincent's blog, which is a daily discussion/rant/opinion on all sorts of things, and I enjoy it. I don't always agree with her point of view, but that is what makes it interesting. It is far from the inane, useless trite that clogs up the internet like cholesterol in my arteries, and it is regular so I get a daily dose, like cholesterol for my arteries. I would love to be able to sustain the impressive amount of entries, but I hardly find the time. The odd occasion I do find to write, I spend working on a story I started a few years ago. I had never really thought about how I would get an audience for it, or get feedback, until I read one of Nik's blog entries. It was about Authonomy, a community website created by the publishers HarperCollins. It allows users to upload their stories, in part or in full, and other members can read it and give advise, critique or praise. As an added bonus, every month 5 titles make it to the desks of the editors, who read and offer their opinions and suggestions. There is even the chance that it will be taken further, although this is quite rare.

I was intrigued by this concept, and joined immediately. I didn't have the confidence to upload my unfinished story at that point, but did read some of the offerings and generally browsed the site. There are some helpful tips, and interviews with established authors where some advice can be gleaned.

More recently, however, I decided that I should upload what I have written. It is still a first draft, but by having it there for the (Authonomy) world to see, it might encourage me to spend more time writing it, and eventually completing it! I haven't done much in the way of promoting it to other readers, but I will start to soon. I am quite anxious about the feedback I might get - no doubt there will be a lot of mistakes in the writing, so technical help will be invaluable, but I am more concerned with the creativity. I am eager to learn what people think about the characters, the direction of the plot, and so on. I have, of course, enrolled my family to read and critique, but there might be more bias there, and perhaps there is something different about a reader who has been coerced into reading it, rather than choosing to. Either way, time will tell how well I can take criticism, and whether I have the capacity to learn from it!