Your own worst critic

“What is writing but an expression of myself.” – Zane Grey

If you are a writer, you always have self doubts about what you are putting down.  Is it good?  Will people care?  Why should they care?  Ultimately, of course, you just need to be happy for and with yourself and the writing you produce.  If you aren’t, or can’t, then you need to re-think whether or not you have chosen the right path.

In 1925, in a letter to his father about his newest book The Torrents of Spring, Ernest Hemingway said he thought it was a funny book but wasn’t sure if others would like it.  But, he added, “I know what I’m doing and it doesn’t make any difference either way what anybody says about it.  Naturally it is nice to have people like it.  But it is inside yourself that you have to judge and nothing anybody says outside can help you anymore than anybody can help you shoot when a partridge flies up.  Either you hit them or you don’t.  Good instruction beforehand teaching you to shoot, etc., is fine.  But after a while it all depends on yourself and you have to be your own worst critic.”

  

Ernest Hemingway                       Zane Grey

 These two writers were contemporaries and outdoorsmen.  They admired each other's work but never met.                                  

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