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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/25875
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Many of these answers are wonderful for determining when a work itself is ready for critique, but I think an additional metric should be added: **Am _I_ ready to receive criticism?** If receiving negative feedback on this work would enrage you or make you burst into tears, you are not ready.

I find this is most often a problem for new writers and writers who are writing based on real experiences, but I will sometimes have issues with this myself if I'm having an "this sucks, therefore I suck" kind of day, or with my poetry, which I use as an emotional outlet. Sometimes I just need a day or so worth of distance before I'm ready to let someone else touch my work, even after taking time to edit and polish it as much as I can on my own.

So ask yourself how you would respond to truly biting criticism. **If your first instinct involves refusing to change anything at all _or_ scrapping everything, you probably need to create some emotional distance from your writing before you are ready for a critique.**

Original score: 4