How to Deal With Being Told That You Suck

Try your hand at anything in life, and chances are good that, before long, you’ll be told that you suck.

And most of the time, it’ll be true.

But there’s nothing wrong with sucking. Society has conditioned us to believe that we must be good at everything we do, or else we shouldn’t bother. We watch movies and television dramas where we constantly see actors and actresses behaving as if life is effortless; as if they will always triumph in any circumstance no matter how much the odds are stacked against them. We watch reality shows such as American Idol where we laugh at the silly fools who are kidding themselves, and we cheer on the folks who make pop music look easy. We love winners, and we shame losers; we make heroes out of those who triumph, whether or not they actually deserve it.

And that’s why we tell each other that we suck. And that’s also why we hate to suck. We want to believe that everything we attempt is going to turn out well. We want to believe that we’re all going to be successful because of our natural talent and abilities. We want to believe that just because we’ve worked hard at something, we’re going to be rewarded for it.

Unfortunately, that’s not how life works. The truth is that most of the time, we do suck, whether we want to admit it or not. Many parents that I’ve met suck at raising kids. Many artists that I’ve met suck at drawing. Many writers (many, many writers) that I’ve met suck at writing. Many educated people that I’ve met suck at thinking for themselves. Many churchgoing people that I’ve met suck at being genuinely nice to others.

That’s because sucking at something is the natural state of things. Being good, or even great, is something you have to work at.

But the first step is in being able to accept the fact that you do, indeed, suck.

I don’t believe in natural talent – the idea that certain people are born with special skills that allow them to, say, play the piano above par or shoot free throws especially well. There are certainly some people who are born with favorable physical characteristics that help them in some tasks, and there are certainly skills that favor these people. But most skills are picked up not through talent, but disposition. I’m not good at working with my hands not because I lack a talent for it, but because I lack the patience to learn how to build things properly. I was a terrible piano player as a child not because I wasn’t meant to play the piano, but because I didn’t enjoy practicing the piano; I was more passionate about percussion instruments instead. I never learned to draw because I didn’t want to put the time into drawing correctly; I wanted to write instead because I found it easier to do since my parents had worked with me on developing my communication skills early on in life.

Our bodies and minds are machines that are made to adapt themselves to our environments. We direct them, and they respond to our passions. This is one of the reasons that we often believe that there is truth to the idea that “you can do anything if you put your mind to it.” We all know we can’t truly do anything, but we know that if we apply ourselves fully, we can often reach heights we’d never considered possible.

In a world where things are quantitative, we can respond to goals and achieve them. If I know how fast I ran a race the last time I tried it, I can attempt to run faster the next time. If I know I played a concerto and made seventeen mistakes, I can attempt to play it again with fewer mistakes the next time.

But in a world where things are qualitative — such as a creative effort — we have fewer metrics for success. Part of the reason for this is because qualitative efforts require subjective judgments. Who can really say with absolute certainty that one restaurant is clearly better than another, or an original film is superior to its sequel? We can evaluate technical merits, we can offer a comparative analysis, and we can even look to outside sources to vindicate our judgment. But in the end, all we can really offer are opinions…Opinions such as “this is great,” or “this sucks.”

Sometimes, we don’t; it’s just someone’s opinion that we do. But often, there’s truth to the statement, on some level, and often, it’s a sign that we need to work harder on our next effort.

Here are a few ways to evaluate whether or not a creative effort truly sucks… and to turn that negative statement into something positive you can use to improve yourself.

1) Is my creative effort below par? Often, people say “this sucks” because it doesn’t live up to their expectations of what something should be. In the comic book world, for example, I’ve often felt that the self-published work one can find in Artist’s Alley at a major convention sucks because it’s not on par with the professional work I’ve seen. Sometimes, it’s because the artist has rushed the work to get it ready for the show, but often, it’s because the artist isn’t nearly ready to hang with the professionals. Fortunately, artists have an amazing capacity to get better when they work at it; the more they study, the better they can become. But study also involves a certain sense of humility; we study to get better because we realize we need to improve.

Writers often suffer from this problem; they create a story that they can’t see being told any other way, only to be told that it “sucks” and that it could be done better when they present it to an audience. And truthfully, most of the time, the critics are right; writers tend to fall in love with their own wording and forget about their readers. The best writing is not that which interests the author; it is that which captivates its audience.

A few years ago, I was hired to write a story called Sixgun Samurai for a friend of mine, and I took on the challenge because I saw something interesting in the story. But the way I told the story — focusing on the history of the character instead of the action — made it unappealing to readers, and I even got a bad review saying that I shouldn’t be trying to write comic books. My response to this was not to get angry; it was to weigh the reviewer’s comments, see if they had merit, accept the points that were valid, and move on. Suffice it to say that I’ll never tell a story that way again; it sucked, and even I can see that now. But in the meantime, I’ve studied the structure of storytelling and forced myself to learn from my mistakes.

2) Is my creative effort easily misunderstood? This might be the case with some projects, though I’ve found that many people who have to constantly defend their work often are simply sucking and not realizing it. A simple rule of the thumb is this: if you have to explain your work, it’s not connecting with your audience. If you want to continue producing work that might be misunderstood, find ways to clue your audience in. If you want to produce work that your audience “gets,” test your work with people over and over without explanation until you get it right.

3) Do I lack skill? I wish that more people would ask this question of themselves. I ask it every time I write something, and I’ve found that it helps me to be a better writer overall. Being self-aware is extremely important when you’re creating something, and being aware of your faults is the surest way of not letting them get in your way. I’ve met far too many writers and artists who are not ready to work at a professional level who think very highly of themselves nonetheless. These are the same folks who love to argue when they’re told that they suck instead of quietly admitting that yes, they could be better.

4) Am I showing this to the wrong audience? I can’t stand most television sitcoms, because the jokes are predictable and the characters are two-dimensional. Therefore, I’m the wrong person to approach with your script for a sitcom pilot. My taste in humor moves towards the dry and the deranged; I’ll take It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia over Two and a Half Men any day, and I think the British version of The Office is far superior to its American counterpart.

Likewise, many creative people have ideas that might appeal to one audience, but which are being presented to another. One example I’ll give are in the folks who want to create Christian comics. Christian readers aren’t interested in comics, and never really have been; history has demonstrated time and time again that Christians would rather read the same comics that everyone else is reading and not their own alternative books where superheroes pray to Jesus before beating up the bad guys. Nor do Christians want to read Biblical-based graphic novels or the continuing adventures of the apostles. It’s just not that exciting to them when they could be reading Batman or Spider-Man instead.

But, there are people outside the Christian market who might appreciate comic books that talk about morality and theology. There are people who find the mythology of Christianity fascinating, even if they don’t follow the religion. These people might be more receptive to Christian-themed comics, but they’re never reached, because the Christian comic book creators are too geared at reaching a niche market of disinterested readers. And thus, because they dress their work to serve this market, their final product sucks.

Different people and different cultures like different things. Some creative efforts are good for the right audience, but will be despised by everyone else. That’s just the way the world works. But keep in mind that if you create to satisfy a niche (which is a viable thing to do as a creative person), you will be ignored by the world at large.

5) Are my friends telling me my work is great because they’re afraid to tell me it’s not? This is a big problem for people; I often have looked over portfolios of artists who have been told that their work is fantastic when it clearly is not. They can’t see that they suck because they’ve sought opinions from people who either don’t know better or who would rather not hurt their feelings. These are the most dangerous opinions a creative person can seek out, because they don’t reflect reality.

I’ve noticed that the internet is a breeding ground for this sort of opinion, especially in communities where people come together because of shared interests. Fanfiction communities, often filled with some of the worst writing one could hope to find online, typically praise bad writers. Poetry websites are also pretty bad about telling people that they suck. Online art galleries and web comics are among the worst, since people often post garbage that they’ve thrown together only to receive accolades from their friends because they included a reference to Final Fantasy VII in their work.

If you want to know what people really think of your work, show it to strangers who know something about your field and ask them to be brutal. More often than not, they’ll knock you down quite a few pegs and tell you that you suck. But at least then, you’ll know that you shouldn’t trust your friends for criticism.

How not to suck

It’s easy to suck; it’s our natural state. No one starts out as a professional in anything. I’ve heard that if you want to be a professional piano player, you have to practice for 10,000 hours – that would take three and a half years if you did so for eight hours a day, every day. The same is probably true of anything. If you want to be good at something, you have to practice, you have to accept criticism, and you have to strive to improve. You have to constantly struggle with what it means to be among the best, and you have to allow yourself to become passionate about being among the best.

The good news is that the better you get at something, the less effort it takes to do it. That means you have more time to focus on making it good. The more you practice at doing something, the better you’ll get. It doesn’t mean that you’ll get rich or that you’ll be successful; those both come from being lucky and being persistent more than anything. But it does mean that you’ll suck a lot less.

Writing Scraps

by Sean J. Jordan