Open thread because I have used up all my go.

Personally, I would rather someone remark that I'm talented or that I'm good at something. It may well have taken a lot of effort, but my goal in most pursuits is to make it look natural and for my mistakes to not show. It takes a lot of work to smooth over mistakes, yes, but I do it so that it looks effortless on my part.

So, "You worked hard at this," certainly acknowledges all the time and energy that goes into it, but it can be insulting, because there's an implication that I had to put that work in to make it look good. Whereas, "You're really good!" ignores all the hard work that went in, but implies I'm doing it right.

And in writing, while it takes a lot of hard work and time, some of that is knowing where to spend one's effort, which is another kind of talent. I can edit and retool a manuscript twenty bazillion times, but, if I'm not fixing what's wrong with it, all that hard work just made it worse.

Which, to go off on a tangent (hope you don't mind), is what bothers me about my writing group's implication that I need to stop editing something I've been working on. As I learn and evolve as a writer, I see what I did wrong in previous drafts, and I fix it. Yes, I will always be evolving, but I feel like my improvement has been coming a lot faster recently. The story will never be as good as it is in my head, but I want it to be the best story I'm able to put in words. That doesn't seem too much to ask.