Too little
Explaining it away
You would understand if you knew what I meant.
The reader’s experience is dismissed instead of examined.
Humility
Your hero has spoken. Unfortunately, the bubble points to someone else.
Openness to recognizing the limits of one’s knowledge and importance.
Humility lets a maker discover what the work is actually doing beyond the maker’s intention. Another person may see a confusing connection, hear a missing beat or notice a strength you overlooked. Receiving that information gives you more to work with. You remain responsible for the revision; being open to criticism does not make every critic correct.
Humility gives a clearer view of how the work reaches others
You show a friend a short comic. They think the quiet bystander has delivered the grand speech. You begin explaining the hero’s personality, then look at the speech bubble. Its tail points straight at the bystander. You move the paper tail and read the scene again. The misunderstanding was useful: it found a small feature that your knowledge of the story had made nearly invisible.
Finding the balance in Humility
An illustrative everyday situation
Use a reader’s observation to correct who appears to speak in your comic.
A fitting response
Learning from the response
Show me where you took that turn.
You locate the problem and test a revision.
Pursued too far
Surrendering the work
Tell me every change I should make.
The critic takes over the maker’s judgment.
Knowing your intention can hide what you have actually put on the page.
When the situation changes
Two readers understand the scene but disagree about whether the hero should speak at all. That is a different kind of response. Consider it against the purpose of the scene rather than treating preference as a detected error.
What Humility makes possible
You can make more precise revisions and become less dependent on defensive explanations. Humility also helps you recognize a contribution without shrinking your own authorship. A useful observation becomes part of the making.
Humility in ordinary life
A rejection with a useful observation
A declined story comes back with a note that the final choice is hard to follow. Before explaining your intention, reread that passage and try making the choice clearer. A useful observation can enter the work even when the refusal disappoints you.
A useful surprise
A listener notices a musical phrase you thought unimportant. Consider whether it deserves development.
Nearby virtues, different work
Discernment
Discernment weighs what to do with a response. Humility makes it possible to receive the response in the first place.
Open-Mindedness
Open-Mindedness considers an alternative direction. Humility recognizes a limit in your present understanding.
Humility and its counterfeits
Counterfeit: Modest performance
Inviting criticism only to display how graciously you receive it is a counterfeit of Humility. The test is whether useful information enters the work.
Counterfeit: Self-dismissal
Calling your work worthless can resemble Humility. Genuine Humility can identify a specific problem while preserving the worthwhile purpose.
How to cultivate Humility
Ask a question about the work rather than your worth as a maker.
Listen for what the person actually encountered.
Try a revision and judge whether it serves the work.
Try it today
Criticism need not be humiliating to be useful. You can end an abusive exchange and seek a different reader.
Show a suitable small section to a willing person and ask where it became clear or confusing. Examine one concrete observation and test a change if it helps. Choose a constructive exchange you can leave.
In a diplomatic conversation
Use criticism that helps the work become clearer.
Questions worth returning to
What does knowing the story make me overlook?
Which observation could I test before defending my intention?
Keep the practice proportionate
Criticism need not be humiliating to be useful. You can end an abusive exchange and seek a different reader.
About these practices · DisclaimerQuotations and further reading
Seven selections to return to through the week. Follow a source link to read the surrounding passage.
the method of study recommended is not brought forward as absolutely the best, but only as the best which I can at present devise for an isolated student.
Ruskin presents his own method as revisable while defending its principles. A maker can have reasons for a choice and still learn how to improve it.
These the professors and visitors may reject or adopt as they shall think proper.
Reynolds offers advice to fellow teachers without making himself their final authority. A suggestion can be useful even when its recipient decides which part belongs in the work.
Criticism is the best test of such work, for it will show her both unsuspected merits and faults, and help her to do better next time.
Mrs. March encourages Jo to let outsiders read her novel. Useful feedback can reveal strengths as well as problems the maker has stopped being able to see.
He is capable of rectifying his mistakes, by discussion and experience.
Mill grounds confidence in judgment in its capacity to be corrected. Asking a reader what actually happened for them provides evidence that private intention alone cannot supply.
he was not without a considerable degree of abilities, but those abilities were by no means equal to his own opinion of them.
Reynolds remembers a successful painter whose self-estimate outran his work. A good reputation need not close the question of what still needs learning.
That a man may not understand all he borrows, may perhaps be verified in myself.
Montaigne includes himself in a criticism of borrowed eloquence. Admitting what you have not yet understood makes a specific question possible.
The subject is a wide and difficult one, and my time much too short to do it any justice, but here and there, perhaps, a hint may crop up, and I may put it in a way somewhat new.
Morris introduces his discussion of pattern design with a modest account of its scope. A maker can offer something useful without claiming to have mastered the entire subject.
Continue exploring
Take these ideas into everyday life
Read freely, follow the fourteen-virtue program, or adapt this collection in My Virtues. Begin with a piece you want to make.