How To Deal With Negative Feedback In A Positive Way

September 08, 2010

I recently received some feedback from a client about how a piece of work I had submitted had a few typos and grammatical errors in it.

When I received the feedback, my first reaction was to be protective of my work and think that the feedback must have been wrong or I’d used a British word which wouldn’t have been understood properly by an American audience.

Then when I checked the piece and realised I had made some errors, I felt annoyed and to a certain extent, embarrassed.

But, in all honesty, I wasn’t overly surprised — I’ve been writing for 3 years now and this was the first piece of negative feedback I’ve received. I’ve produced work for a range of different clients in a variety of different styles and I’ve managed for over 3 years to not receive a piece of negative feedback.

That’s not to say I wasn’t angry, upset and embarrassed. Plus, there was a bit of worry in there, too — as soon as I received the feedback, I started questioning my work in general and myself as a writer, worrying whether the mistake I’d made was going to have such a negative effect on my relationship with the client that they were going to stop hiring me as a writer.

Although the feedback hit me quite hard, I was surprised with myself at how I acted.

I was expecting to be a little irrational, but I managed to keep my head and put into practice the 3 steps I’d researched and put together for when a time like this occurred.

First, I let myself have a few minutes being annoyed and feeling down over the mistakes

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’m a positive person. When you get told you’ve made a mistake, though, you naturally feel annoyed and upset and although you can mask these feelings initially, they’re going to come out sooner or later, so just let them out straight away.

Don’t go spending days worrying about a typo or two, but allow the negative feelings to get out of your system before you do anything else.

I then looked at why I’d made the errors

Was it because I was busy and didn’t have time to check or edit properly? Was I just being lazy and couldn’t be bothered to double check my work? Or was it because editing isn’t my favourite part of being a freelance writer?

I came to the conclusion that it was a combination of the first and third reasons. Things have been particularly hectic for me over the past 6 weeks and I think I let the things that I don’t particularly enjoy slip somewhat.

The final step I took was to look at how these mistakes could be prevented in the future

My initial reaction in this instance was to simply take more time proofing and editing. It’s not something I particularly enjoy, but it’s part of being a writer and so I should dedicate more time to it.

However, I then considered hiring a professional editor to look through all of my work before I send it to clients. I researched this a little more and realised that it’s a fantastic option and whilst I’m not going to hire a professional editor at the moment (I want to know that I can effectively edit my own work, rather than ignoring the fact it’s one of my weak points), it’s definitely something I’m going to look at in the future.

What’s more, as discussed in my recent post ‘Are You Writing In The Most Efficient Way Possible?’, I’m going to stick with editing after writing each individual piece. Proofing and editing a large batch of work at once might work for some, but it really doesn’t work for me.

I think what every writer has to realise is that they’re going to make mistakes at some point throughout their career. No matter how much you check your work or how proficient you become as a writer, chances are you’re going to make the occasional typo.

The point you have to remember is that you’re only human. Mistakes are never good and if you make them regularly, they’re going to have a detrimental effect on both you as a writer and your relationship with your clients. But no one is going to hang you out to dry over the occasional misspelled word or grammatical mistake, no matter how much it may feel like they will at the time.

Do you find proofing and editing a difficult thing to do? Have you ever been in a situation where making a mistake has had a big effect on your career? Has poor proofing cost you client or have your excellent editing skills landed you a gig?