Writing Is An Art

And this is the reason why criticism annoys me

Photo by Ivan Samkov from Pexels

For a few months now, I’ve been writing on Medium and also publishing in various publications. I’ve noticed that I react very sensitively to specific critical feedback from editors. So I’ve asked myself: Why?

Reactions from editors

Reactions to drafts I proposed varied widely:

1. Accepted without comment,
2. accepted with nice, motivating words,
3. rejected without comment or standard sentence,
4. rejected because it does not fit the publication,
5. request to change the title,
6. changes made by editors without consultation (image, title),
7. peer review with a lot of comments and requests for changes (would have changed 60–70% of my story).

I can live very well with 1. to 4. But, I have a problem with 5. through 7.

Writing: Art, craft, or both?

I wrote my first articles many years ago for a US magazine about SAP CRM development tools for which I was a product manager. It was not art for me but a craft. The magazine defined the structure for the articles. I filled this structure by describing the features and benefits…