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Over the years, I've written a lot on WDC and received a lot of constructive reviews. All the reviewers have my gratitude - those whose suggestions I implemented and those where I chose to go with my own instinct over their suggestions.
Greetings, Readers!
I've actually had to trust myself to pen this newsletter - there were doubts - am I encouraging people to become arrogant? Then I remembered the other rule of writing - trust your audience. So I trust myself to convey this message and I trust you to get it in a way that helps you grow as a writer.
What is writing? (Big question!)
I guess it is pinning and penning patterns. Something inside you that you want to share, something external that you want to reflect ... you grasp it and put it down. So you are the presenter of this pattern. You paint the word picture that the reader will receive. The reader then interprets, reacts and (maybe, if you're lucky) gives you some feedback.
The feedback can be about content or style. What you say and how you say it.
When I write stories, I often feel that the emotions and incidents are more important than - say - the appearance of the character. Sometimes, not wanting to place the character in any particular culture, I refrain from naming anyone - referring to them with pronouns or relationships like 'her sister'.
Reviewers have pointed this out and told me I should have said something like 'Sarah Smith tossed her long black hair ..." I understand what they're saying and why it's necessary -- but I'm going to take a call for every story, whether I want my protagonist to have a name and physical description out there, or whether these are left to the reader. In some cases, I might decide that it doesn't matter if you imagine her as Sarah Smith with long black hair or Sujata Sinha with curly brown locks - what matters is that she loves her teddy bear and talks to it each night. So I take a call not to name or physically describe my protagonist.
Am I making a mistake? Maybe. If I want to make her 'real', shouldn't I tell readers what she looks like, what she's wearing, and what her favourite gestures are? Maybe. But I'm trusting myself to make a mistake and learn from it. I might repeat it, too - I might be an obstinate pig and decide that only emotion, dialogue and motivation are important in some of my stories. It's still important to consider the feedback of those who wanted the elements I left out - and check if it strengthens or weakens my resolve.
Then there's the other side of the coin.
Trusting the reviewer / review.
I remember there was a story I wrote about a child in class caught in a dilemma whether to rat on his fellow students or not. In my story, those students were out smoking cigarettes, which was against the rules, and had been accused of stealing. This child happened to have seen them smoking and could get them off the other charge of stealing.
In the scene I wrote up, I had him ponder and then raise his hand, to be questioned by the teacher and tell what he had to. A reviewer pointed out that stopping the scene at him raising his hand was enough ... it meant he was going to tell and it's better left to the reader's imagination what followed. I thought this an excellent suggestion and promptly implemented it.
Then, there are some reviewers I trust. I request reviews from then when I enter an important contest and need to know if my piece works. When they send their review, I read it very slowly and carefully and decide which of their suggestions I want to implement. If there are suggestions I feel I don't need to implement, I need to have a reason why in my head.
In short, for me as someone who writes and receives reviews for the written work, trusting myself means three things:
1. Trusting that I know what I want to say and how I want to say it
2. Trusting that I know which suggestions given by reviewers will help improve the piece in some way
3. Trusting that I know which reviewers I respect most and want to request reviews from
So trusting yourself doesn't mean being arrogant or overconfident. It means having an instinct for what is best for your writing.
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Noticing Newbies: January 28, 2026 Issue [#13559]
