It's Good To Be Confident, But A Little Ego Goes A Very Long Way

I started a new temp assignment recently, a professional one involving proofreading and formatting documents before submission to the FDA. After two weeks, all is going well, and I'm pleased with my performance and what I've learned. My eye is getting sharper all the time (a skill that no doubt will come in handy when reading over my own manuscripts), and I am more comfortable working with MS Word (I'm a WordPerfect gal, but of course that software is pretty much obsolete in our Microsoft-dominated world.)

The documents I work with have been composed by medical writers, and I have been warned not to actually change anything they've written, just point it out for them and let them decide what to do. That makes perfect sense to me. They're the authors; the final decision should be theirs. I admire their skills, and I'll say this: It's much easier to say what's wrong with a document than it is to actually create it, whether it be background information relating to a new pharmaceutical product or a work of fiction, the latter being my specialty.

But what doesn't make sense to me is the attitudes of some of the writers, the ones I'm told will react to suggestions by haughtily saying, "Leave it the way it is." In other words, they won't even consider the possibility that perhaps they've gotten a word or a punctuation mark wrong, left out a word, etc.

I find this attitude incredulous, and more than a little pathetic. As a fiction writer, I continually strive to improve my product. I still struggle with certain grammatical rules, like the difference between lay and lie, and the difference between that and which. When I lived in Florida I attended a critique group, not regularly anymore because of time constraints, but occasionally, like when I wanted feedback on a new project. Some of their suggestions were completely outlandish, because they either didn't "get" the story or understand the culture of the characters. But other suggestions they made were invaluable. The trick is, you have to know the difference, what will work for your story and what won't.

I also welcome feedback from readers, even the negatives (at least those that give explanations as to why they didn't like my story). I get nothing constructive out of a review that says something like, "Terrible! Couldn't finish it!" Although I must admit, my personal favorite was the person who wrote simply, "A note to the author: Please don't ever write another book." Even now I'm smiling; it was hilarious. I bristle when I hear authors say that people who write negative reviews "have it in" for them. Do they really feel they've written masterpieces? Can they honestly say that they absolutely adored every book they've ever read? So why should their work have universal appeal? (I know, because they wrote it.)

I wonder if I'm the only author who feels this way. Because, in my opinion, maintaining the belief that you know everything about writing and/or are immune from errors and/or cannot possibly do anything to improve your work, no matter how many hundreds of documents or short stories or novels you have had published, is a demonstration of ego so strong it's laughable.