“What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“17 percent less judgmental” — one morning on my ramblings, I came across a small square yellow placard — like one of those “Baby on Board” signs — with these words emblazoned on it in black. I have no idea where it came from, but it certainly gave me food for thought on my early morning walk.

Why “17 percent?” I wondered? Now that’s a mystery. Then I considered the words, “less judgmental” — and began thinking about how judgmental we all are about our own writing, as well as the work of others.

“Judgmental” is defined as “having an excessively critical point of view” in my handy Compact Oxford English Dictionary. That sums it up nicely, doesn’t it? When we’re “excessively critical” and too harsh on ourselves in our writing lives, what does it do to us? What results does it reap? It probably has the same impact on our work as it does on our lives as kids and even as adults.

When someone criticizes of our behavior harshly, some of us tend to shrink back and shut down; others resist and push back. Either way, this attitude and our own response to it can have a negative effect on our writing and improving our craft.

If we shrink back and shut down, we become timid and hesitant: We’re more likely to “play it safe” and less likely to experiment with bold ideas in our writing. On the other hand, if we tend to resist judgment and “push back” against it, we’re more likely to stubbornly continue down a plot path that isn’t working or cling to an outmoded view of a character when the character itself is changing right before us on the page.

Whether we retreat or resist when we respond to criticism in our writing, we lose something. And when we are our own harshest critics, which is so often the case, we limit our own potential, which is the worst of all, because, as someone I admire said recently, “The only limitations are the ones we put on ourselves.”

So, let’s consider the value of being “17 percent less judgmental” about our writing. Think about it: If we rounded this off and decided to be even 20 percent less hard on ourselves — or, taking  a positive spin, if we were 20 percent kinder to ourselves and other writers — what would happen?

Who knows, the whole world might crack open! In any event, it would surely be a better place. So let’s be kinder to ourselves and our fellow scribes as we all write on.