Chad discusses Editing and its Discontents over at Uncertain Principles.

At NIST, the paper-writing process was called “paper torture” for a reason, and it wasn’t that we were waterboarding our printed drafts. The process consisted of one author writing a draft, circulating it to everybody else, and then having a three-hour meeting in which every word of every sentence was challenged by somebody.

I have to admit, I had a slight tendency to take this personally. Not so much in a “my confidence in my ability to write well has been shattered” sense, though. More of a “how dare you criticize my deathless prose” kind of way. This probably dragged some paper torture sessions out longer than they needed to be, because my co-authors were almost always right, but having my drafts that I worked hard on cut to pieces always got my back up.

I’ve been fortunate that in my career, the group discussions giving feedback on papers or presentations have never gotten particularly rancorous — there is the occasional difference of opinion, but most of the time the author will admit that the suggestion makes the work better, or has some good reason for not making the change, and the matter is pretty quickly resolved. Everybody has their name on the paper, so there’s certainly motivation to put the best work out there as possible.

I had almost all of my tendency to take criticism personally beaten out of me while I was in the navy. If there’s one thing the military is good at, it’s generating leaders who are skilled at yelling at people for screwing up, but this goes even beyond that. The training to become a teacher included several practice lectures, after which the “students” (staff members observing and play-acting as necessary) gave critiques. And boy, was there criticism. (You’re facing the board. You’re mumbling. You keep saying, “So.” You’re doing that. You’re not doing this.) Realizing that the need to improve didn’t mean you were a bad person, and developing a thick skin, was pretty much mandatory. It was nice, though, when there was the occasional positive comment, and when reviewing I try to point out things done well, too, as well as picking at nits.