Goodreads asked Samuel Ferrer:

What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

Samuel Ferrer Definitely! Firstly, any newbie would be strongly advised to “workshop” their material with other writers. Not just friends, but writers, who will tend to be more objective and critical. I learned a tremendous amount through this and would consider it critical to my development. Much of the editing process is simply about house cleaning; mitigating one’s tendencies to overwrite. And how others pick these out is often times not what I would have foreseen. Having said that… be strong! One thing I noticed in “workshopping” is that some writers would fold under the criticism, or even ask that the criticism be gentle. As a professional classical musician, my training over many years was significantly based on critical feedback, which is often hard on the ego. But no matter how humbling, I always believed in the process. So I already had this mentality when I came to writing. Writing is intensely personal and therefore it is natural to take the criticism hard, but that is exactly when you need to consciously set yourself aside and sign on to the process. Over time, you will eventually start to weed out arbitrary feedback from that which is very useful.

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