harsh critique

I find blowing my own trumpet not just hard, but well nigh impossible. Everywhere I look, there are other writers, pushing their books for all their might, yet I can’t seem to be able to do that. My confidence still needs work. It only takes one negative comment and I’m upset. For example, a friend of mine asked for a criqitue when they entered the NAWG competition. I did the crits without knowing who the writers were. She has come back to me saying that she thought my critique was harsh. At once I felt bad even though I KNOW I would never say anything hurtful or cruel. If I did say anything harsh, it was probably just an honest appraisal because for me, without honesty, feedback isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. It certainly isn’t worth paying for. Yet I’m still upset. I don’t make friends easily and thanks to my upbringing, have always felt that I needed to try and ‘buy’ friendship, usually by putting myself last, or giving time I didn’t have or gifts I couldn’t afford.
My friend’s comment almost put my off ever doing critiques again. As a writer, I need people to want to read my books, so what do I do? I can be honest and risk upsetting people or be nice and let them carry on making the same mistakes.
All I know is that if somebody (more than one!) hadn’t told me my stories were weak, and frankly rubbish, I would still be writing the same, weak, rubbish stories and getting precisely nowhere. As it is, I’ve sold literally hundreds of stories to magazines, and won competitions too.
Also on the writing front, I’ve written to a few local writing groups to see if I can get any bookings for next year. I’ve also gone back to the book I started a couple of months ago. That’s the trouble with me. I have so many ideas, it’s hard to decide what to do next. I thought of another idea for a book only this afternoon. Sadly, I can only do one thing at a time.
I added some more published works to ALCS today. Now they’re accepting newspaper articles too so I’ve been able to add three of the pieces I did for the Sunday Times Confessions of a Tourist slot.
Tonight I’m off to a ‘do’ where I’m in charge of the quiz. Frankly I’d rather be able to take part as that way I might win a prize (I won last year) but it’s only fair for somebody else to do the hard work. I have an even bigger do on tomorrow – the Christmas party at Spice, so I hope I can find the energy I need.