Thread by @seananmcguire

I took a nap, and while I was sleeping someone raised the question of constructive criticism. As in, if I'm not willing to listen to your story ideas, how will I receive your constructive criticism?

Well, first, I'm not sure those words mean what you think they mean.

Twitter is a firehose. I see maybe half the tweets directed at me, and that's on a day like today, when I'm home and at my computer and checking my feed fairly frequently.

Sometimes tweets never show up in my feed at all, and I only see them if I go directly to someone's profile for some reason (usually because I want to re-tweet pictures of their cats).

If you really, truly have constructive (helpful, beneficial, actionable) criticism for me, why would you ever put it here? I have an open contact form on my website. I have an Ask box on Tumblr.

If you feel the need to offer your "constructive criticism" on Twitter, it feels less like "I really think she can make a positive change that would enhance my enjoyment of her work" and more like "I want to get credit for doing this in a public place".

No one is above criticism! But I don't ask the wide world for constructive criticism of my work, because by the time you see it, it's too late for me to change it. I have editors. I have beta readers. I have people involved at earlier stages.

A review is not constructive criticism, it's a review. They need to exist, for readers. They are not a space for me.

And yes, there are things my early readers miss. My earliest work (anything 2014 or before) is chock-full of ableist slurs that none of us KNEW were ableist slurs.

The conversation has advanced to such a point that it seems facile to say "I didn't know this word was a bad word until 2014", but that was five years ago (what is time?), and "gosh, this author throws a lot of slurs around" is a valid critique.

Telling me NOW does nothing. It won't change the books that already exist. I've owned and apologized for and explained this problem. More importantly, I've changed my vocabulary. The criticism does not apply to my more recent work.

Telling me NOW and in public doesn't magically mean I can edit those earlier books. It just makes me defensive, because it feels like you're trying to score points.

"I think you should tell this story, with these characters" is not constructive criticism by any definition of the phrase. It's ignoring my stated wishes and my denial of conversational consent.

You can make a whole Twitter feed that's just Story Ideas I Wish Seanan McGuire Would Write. As long as you never @ me, that's your call. But I do not consent to you showing them to me directly. That's not criticism. It's arrogance.