Evaluating one’s own writing

Why is it so hard to eval­u­ate one’s own writing?

I think the answer may be found in some­thing I’ve often said, “Writ­ers don’t write writ­ing, they write read­ing.”  The stranger who comes to your writ­ing responds sole­ly to the text because there are no hints, prompts, or sug­ges­tions about that text. Such read­ers only see what is there, and will respond accord­ing­ly. The writer of the text, how­ev­er, brings an array of added infor­ma­tion and emo­tion to the text. 

I was recent­ly read­ing the mem­oir of a promi­nent writer, who wrote about using the par­tic­u­lar eccen­tric char­ac­ter traits of a close rela­tion to express the thoughts of a long gone queen of Eng­land. Writ­ers do this sort of thing all the time. 

But if the pas­sage is writ­ten in such a way that a read­er can­not grasp the moment, what remains is a pas­sage which only moves the writer, for his words are infused with his mem­o­ry. For the read­er, who does not have that  mem­o­ry, the emo­tion is not there.  In oth­er words, it’s not the emo­tion in the writer that mat­ters. It is the skill of the writer in con­vey­ing that emo­tion to the read­er which is vital.You write a pas­sage about some real emo­tion, and when you read it over it evokes the same emotion—but it’s not in the text. It is in you. In short, it’s hard to cri­tique your own work, not because of what you have writ­ten, but because of what you have not written. 

What you feel is help­ful. But what mat­ters is your skill in com­mu­ni­cat­ing the feel­ing to readers.