I recently approached a friend about proofreading the latest copy of my novel The Awakened. The purpose of this process is to catch mistakes and improve the story, and yet, as the feedback rolls in, what I find myself thinking about is the process of accepting criticism altogether. If you’re like me, you probably reject criticism from those that you don’t respect. Or at least we try to tell ourselves that the criticism—however accurate—is not going to be accepted just because of the source. And then we proceed with the struggle of ignoring the words that repeat themselves in our mind over and over in the following days. But what about the opposite end of the spectrum? How do you react to criticism from those whom you respect?

In manufacturing industries, statistical process control (SPC) is a method by which manufacturing processes are controlled to minimize variation and prevent the production of defective product. As objects are produced, certain characteristics are measured and the results are plotted on a chart in the same order as the objects where produced. The new data, and its position relative to previous data, determines whether the variation is normal (random) or not (non-random).

Of all the zillions of uses for this methodology, one of the most interesting is that it keeps the process engineer (stereotypically a control freak) from tweaking the process when he/she is not supposed to. Some amount of variation is normal, and if you react to every little data point, you will end up introducing more variation into the process, which may ultimately lead to a lower-quality product. The proper reaction is to look for—and react to—trends.

Perhaps this principle could be applied to other areas of my life, but specifically as an author, I find myself wanting to tweak the story. To conform. While I want my writing to be the best that it can possibly be, I am also aware that over-working something can ruin it. Instead, I’m challenging myself by asking the question: “Is this a trend, or just an isolated opinion?”