The best criticism I ever received on a piece of writing was this: "You're trying too hard." There was more to that statement, but I'll spare you the play-by-play. I am pretty good at taking criticism. And yet this one confused me for a long time. When I rewrote a novel into a novella I was able to understand my creative writing teacher's comment fully. I had been trying too hard to be the writer I thought I wanted to be and not the writer I was.