Kindness

For this week of the A-to-Z Blogging Challenge I’ve decided to work on a theme – What Every Writer Needs. Each day’s blog post will be something that has been important to my writing journey which I believe will be helpful to others. Today’s word is kindness.

Writing can be a difficult life. Harshness can make it even that much more difficult. It takes courage to put our words out there for the world to see. Kindness can make it a bit less painful.

I’ve belonged to a writing group for several years. It is a critiquing group and has been one of the most rewarding experiences. That is not to say that it has always been easy. There are times when a critique has been quite difficult to hear. The good thing about this is that this group always looks for the positive in a piece first before any criticism is offered. Any critique is focused on the work not on the writer. Though it is difficult not to take personally, for the most part it isn’t meant that way. This is a kindness.

By kindness I don’t mean gushing praise for a mediocre piece. Kindness means using words in a positive way to bring about change for the writer and the writing. This is what we all want. We want our work to be looked at critically and be given options to make our work better. After all we are all on the same road even though we take different paths.

What ways have you experienced kindness as a writer?