: Re: How do I recover my confidence after a harsh writing group? Having majored in writing in my undergraduate studies, I spent lots of time getting critiques from my fellow students, some of whom

@Cugini967

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Two tips:

You are not your story. Your story may really, really suck. However, that doesn't mean that you're a bad writer or that you'll never write anything worth reading. It just means that this particular story needs work. If you're ever going to have a measure of success as a writer, you have to learn to disassociate your self-esteem from negative feedback you get about any particular story.

Which leads to:

Allow your writing to suck. Guess what? Pretty much everyone's first drafts suck. Second drafts, too. You may have to go through ten drafts to get to the one that works. You may also have to go through ten terrible short story ideas before you start writing the one that's going to be great. Don't sweat the fact that what you're doing right now isn't as beautiful and perfect as you want it to be--you can come back later and make it better, and if you don't have those skills right now, you can work on something else and come back when you have the perspective and the experience to write your story the way you've always imagined it.

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