I think I’ve mentioned at least once or twice (or twenty or thirty times) that I took Brandon Sanderson’s creative writing class in 2016. At the end of the semester, he asked the 15 of us in the class to turn in 5,000 polished words that he would personally critique.

I was excited about getting that feedback. I felt like I’d learned a lot in his class and had really improved my writing. Now, I knew that I wasn’t going to amaze him since I’d already been getting feedback from him when he’d drop in on my critique group, but I wanted to impress him at least a little bit.

Well, the class ended that April and my wait began. I anticipated getting a response in December-ish since Brandon IS busy with big published author obligations. As Dec approached, I got antsier and antsier.

Nothing.

So I emailed his assistant in January. Brandon hadn’t forgotten me. He was still working on my critique between his other work, but don’t expect anything for a few more months. So I settled in for another long wait.

I took another look at everything I’d written in Brandon’s class and saw SO. MANY. FLAWS. I’ll be honest, while I had cleaned up the first 5,000 words of that WIP, I didn’t pay too much attention to it. I really did think that it was polished and I was trying to reach the high word count goal that Brandon set for the class. At this point, I knew that if *I* was seeing problems, Brandon definitely would.

So I got to work revising everything immediately following the section I sent him. And I was excited about my story in a way that I haven’t been in a long time.

Recently I got his feedback. And he said some stuff that surprised me and even more stuff that didn’t really surprise me. He pointed out flaws that I hadn’t really considered. And immediately I started brainstorming fixes.

When I shared his feedback with my family, they commented on how well I was taking it.

It’s because I was actually ready for it. I had distanced myself enough from what I sent him that I wasn’t looking for mild (or exhuberant) praise anymore. I really wanted to know what he thought wasn’t working.

How many times are we actually ready for constructive feedback versus hoping for a pat on the back and maybe one or two small things to fix?

I’m discovering that perhaps, at least for me, I’m not always ready like I think I am.