Your writing may suck, but you’re not a sucky writer.

Don’t give up after receiving criticism on that first draft.

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I am a writer. My writing is my creative expression, my psychotherapy, and my activism. I love writing for fun. I love writing to relax. I love writing for money. After trying out a few other gigs, I’m confident that writing is the greatest career on the planet.

But writing is also difficult. Sometimes, writing is excruciatingly painful. If you’re a writer too, you understand.

Writer’s block strikes unexpectedly. Maybe you know what to say, but not how to say it. You think an article should take you two hours, but then it takes two days. Two, three, four days of searching for synonyms, beefing up mediocre descriptions, and eliminating “to be” verbs. Then, when you’re finally done, it’s time to open yourself up to a cold, painful critique.

Unless you’re the sort of writer who shoves all your work into a trunk that lives under your bed, you deal with criticism on at least a weekly basis. You’re constantly hearing, “You need to make a lot of edits,” and, “The objective of this piece isn’t clear,” and the worst, “This isn’t the right fit for us at this moment.”

Here’s the good news: everyone’s writing sucks sometimes. In fact, everyone’s first drafts suck…