Writing a book sometimes feels less like writing than mining.
You begin with a belief that somewhere beneath the surface there is something worth finding. Perhaps it is an argument, a story, a question, or simply an idea that refuses to leave you alone. Research removes one layer. Writing removes another. Rewriting drives the shaft deeper. Ideas are followed until some reveal a vein and others end against solid rock. Pages are excavated, paragraphs broken apart, sources examined, and arguments tested. Some of the material proves valuable. Much of it does not.
Eventually, if you are fortunate, you find the vein. Then comes the processing. Words are crushed and separated. Chapters are reorganized. Passages that once seemed indispensable are discarded. Research that consumed days may produce a single sentence or disappear entirely. Editors make cuts. The author makes more. What finally emerges is the finished book: the gold recovered from an enormous amount of material.
But every mine leaves something behind.
In mining, there is an important distinction between waste rock and tailings. Waste rock includes material removed to gain access to the ore. Tailings come later. The U.S. Geological Survey defines them as the material remaining after mined ore has been milled and concentrated. In other words, tailings are not simply the dirt that stood between the miner and the gold; they are what remains after material containing something valuable has already been processed. (USGS)
That distinction makes the metaphor more useful to the writer. The abandoned research, deleted paragraphs, unsuccessful arguments, and ideas that did not fit are part of what remains from the creative process. Yet another kind of tailings begins accumulating only after the book enters the world: reviews, comments, criticism, questions, corrections, and observations from readers.
We thought we had already processed the ore.
Then someone points back toward the tailings pile.
What Remains After the Book
Reviews arrive. Readers comment. Friends offer observations. Critics identify weaknesses. Someone misunderstands an argument. Someone else sees something the author never saw. One reader loves precisely the passage another believes should have been removed. Some criticism is thoughtful and carefully expressed. Some is superficial. Some is careless. Occasionally, it is cruel.
For an author, criticism can be particularly difficult because the critic encounters the finished product while the writer remembers the mine. A reviewer may have spent three hours with the book. The writer may have spent three years. That difference does not make the reviewer wrong, but it helps explain why a seemingly casual sentence can strike with surprising force. The reader sees the gold on the table. The writer remembers every shovel of earth required to find it.
There are two easy ways to deal with that discomfort, and neither is particularly useful. We can accept every criticism as authoritative and allow other people to determine the value of our work. Or we can dismiss criticism altogether: They didn't understand what I was trying to accomplish. They aren't my audience. They missed the point.
Sometimes those statements are true. But they can also become convenient ways of avoiding the tailings pile.
The more difficult response is to return to the material and ask a different question: Is there still something valuable here?
The First Tool: The Common Gavel
Epictetus offers a useful place to begin. In the Enchiridion, he argues that when another person insults or irritates us, we should recognize the role our own judgment plays in our reaction. His practical advice is especially important: do not immediately allow yourself to be carried away by the first appearance of the offense. Gain time, and self-command becomes easier (Epictetus, 1890/ca. 125, §20).
That is not a demand that we become emotionless. It is a demand that emotion not become the final judge.
The first reading of criticism is often emotional. The second can become analytical.
That is where the Mason might reach for the Common Gavel.
Albert G. Mackey explains the speculative meaning of the Common Gavel through its operative purpose: the tool breaks off the rough and superfluous portions of the stone so that it can be better fitted for the builder's use. Albert Pike develops the broader principle throughout Morals and Dogma: raw force accomplishes little until intelligence governs and directs it. The work of improvement requires labor applied with judgment (Mackey, 1914; Pike, 1871).
Applied to criticism, however, the Gavel takes on an interesting purpose. We do not swing it at the critic. We swing it at our own reaction.
Defensiveness may be the first rough corner that needs to come off. Perhaps the reviewer really did misunderstand the book. Perhaps the criticism really is unfair. Perhaps the person offering it has no appreciation for what we were attempting to accomplish. Any of those things may be true, but none answers the question that matters to the craftsman.
Is there a flake of gold buried in what was said?
That is the hard work of processing the tailings. A review does not have to be entirely correct to contain something useful. A critic may misunderstand nine parts of an argument and inadvertently expose a weakness in the tenth. A reader may dislike a book for reasons that have nothing to do with its quality while still identifying a passage that genuinely lacks clarity.
The reverse is also true. Praise is not automatically gold. A glowing review may make us feel wonderful without teaching us anything. A harsh review may irritate us for a week and contain the single observation that makes the next book better.
The miner cannot judge ore by whether it feels pleasant in his hand.
Anger Is Not the Problem
Aristotle understood that emotional discipline does not mean eliminating emotion. In Book IV of the Nicomachean Ethics, he argues that the virtuous person is not someone who never becomes angry. The question is whether anger arises for the right reason, toward the right person, in the right manner, at the right time, and for the proper duration. Virtue lies between emotional deficiency and excess (Aristotle, 1934, 4.5).
That matters when receiving criticism because the goal is not to pretend that words do not hurt. Anyone who has invested years in creating something understands how unrealistic that would be. A dismissive sentence about work into which we poured enormous effort may sting. An unfair accusation may make us angry. A reviewer may attack something we consider deeply important.
The discipline lies in what happens next.
We can be offended and still examine the criticism. We can believe a reviewer was unfair and still ask whether part of the observation was correct. We can reject someone's conclusion while considering the evidence that led that person there.
That is not weakness.
It is craftsmanship.
The Square: Testing What We Find
The Gavel breaks the criticism apart, but breaking material apart does not tell us whether what remains has value. For that we need another tool.
The Square measures.
Criticism cannot simply be accepted because someone offered it. It must be tested. Does the criticism identify an actual weakness? Did I fail to explain something adequately? Did several independent readers stumble at the same place? Is the objection about craftsmanship, or merely preference? Would accepting this criticism make the next work stronger, or would it simply make the work conform to the taste of one particular reader?
This is where humility must coexist with judgment. Rejecting every criticism can become arrogance, but accepting every criticism is not humility. It is surrender. The craftsman's responsibility is not to believe everything said about his work. His responsibility is to examine it honestly.
There is also a significant difference between intention and execution. The writer knows what he meant. He knows what he was trying to communicate. The reader has access to none of that private intention. The reader can judge only what actually reached the page.
That distinction can produce one of the most uncomfortable discoveries in the entire tailings pile.
The critic was right.
If several thoughtful readers consistently misunderstand the same argument, eventually the writer must at least consider that the problem may not lie entirely with the readers. Perhaps the argument was not developed sufficiently. Perhaps something that seemed obvious to the writer was never actually placed on the page. Perhaps a transition existed clearly in the author's mind but not in the manuscript.
Finding that nugget requires humility because it threatens the story we naturally tell ourselves about our own craftsmanship. Yet it may also be among the most valuable things we recover.
The Square does not care whether we like the measurement.
It simply gives us the measurement.
The Compasses: Knowing When to Stop Digging
There is, however, another danger. A miner can become obsessed with recovering the last trace of valuable mineral. Eventually the cost of processing the tailings exceeds the value of whatever might remain.
The same can happen with criticism.
Reviews can become compulsive. We reread a negative comment long after we have extracted everything useful from it. We revisit a careless sentence written by a stranger. We mentally compose rebuttals that will never be delivered. Ten readers may praise the work, yet our attention keeps returning to the eleventh who did not.
At some point, another Masonic working tool becomes necessary.
The Compasses establish a boundary.
Not every criticism deserves an answer. Not every misunderstanding requires correction. Not every reviewer needs to be persuaded, and not every pile of tailings deserves to be processed indefinitely. There comes a point when the useful material has been recovered and the rest must remain where it is.
This may be one of the hardest lessons of authorship because a book never feels entirely like a manufactured object. Something of its creator remains attached to it. Criticism of the work can therefore feel uncomfortably close to criticism of the person.
But perhaps that is precisely why the Masonic metaphor matters. The Mason is never presented as finished stone. He remains both workman and material. The working tools are not displayed merely because he has learned their definitions. They remind him that the work continues.
A published book may be finished.
The writer is not.
There May Still Be Gold in the Tailings
Here the mining metaphor becomes more than metaphor.
Modern mining operations and geologists sometimes return to material that earlier miners discarded. The U.S. Geological Survey is actively studying historic mine wastes because materials once considered worthless can contain minerals that were overlooked, unwanted, uneconomical, or technologically impossible to recover when the original mining occurred. What one generation regarded as waste can, under different circumstances, become a resource.
That is remarkably close to what happens with criticism.
An observation we initially dismiss may make sense six months later. A question a reader asks may reveal the subject of another essay. A criticism that seems irrelevant to the present book may become central to the next one. An abandoned argument may deserve another excavation from a different direction. Even a misunderstanding can reveal something important about how we communicate.
The value was there.
We simply were not prepared to recover it yet.
Marcus Aurelius repeatedly returned to the idea that correction should not be treated as humiliation. In the Meditations, the governing concern is whether something is true and whether changing course brings us closer to what is right. The person capable of correction has not been defeated; he has acquired better information (Marcus Aurelius, trans. 1916).
That changes the purpose of criticism. The central question is no longer, Did the reviewer like my book? A more useful question is, What can this teach the craftsman who will write the next one?
Now the tailings pile looks different.
There may be abandoned ideas there that become future essays. Questions one book could not answer may become another book. A reader's misunderstanding might reveal an argument deserving clearer treatment. A critic's objection might expose a weakness in our reasoning. Even an unfair review might force us to articulate more clearly why we believe what we believe.
And somewhere in all that debris may be a few flakes of gold.
Financing the Next Mine
Eventually, however, the mine plays out. The manuscript closes. The book goes to press. The reviews arrive. Eventually even they become quiet.
But the craftsman moves on.
Before he does, he works the tailings one last time. He takes up the Gavel and breaks the criticism apart. He uses the Square to test what remains. He draws the Compasses to know when the search has gone far enough. Some of what he finds is worthless and should remain exactly where he found it. But here and there, buried among the debris, are flakes of gold: an observation he had not considered, a weakness he failed to recognize, a question left unanswered, an idea worth pursuing, perhaps even the uncomfortable realization that a critic was right.
Those pieces are recovered. The rest is left behind.
A wise miner does not haul the entire tailings pile from one mine to the next. Neither should a writer carry every criticism, insult, disappointment, misunderstanding, or unfavorable review into the next work. Those things become weight, and enough accumulated weight eventually prevents the craftsman from doing the very thing criticism should help him do: improve.
But neither should he abandon the gold he found among the waste.
He takes that gold with him—not as baggage, but as capital.
Perhaps that is the real value of criticism. We do not have to love it. We do not have to agree with all of it. We certainly do not have to carry all of it. We only need enough discipline to return to the pile, work through what remains, and recognize something valuable when we find it.
The gold recovered from the tailings of one book can help finance the excavation of the next.
Then the craftsman picks up his tools.
And begins digging again.
Reflections on the Craft: Questions for Deeper Understanding
• Working the Tailings:
o When criticism initially feels unfair or hurtful, how can the Common Gavel help you break apart your emotional reaction and search for the useful truth that may still be buried within it?
• Testing What You Recover:
o How can the Square help you distinguish between criticism that reveals a genuine weakness in your work and criticism that merely reflects another person's preferences or misunderstanding?
• Financing the Next Mine:
o Once you have used the Compasses to determine when to stop examining criticism, how can you use the valuable lessons you recovered from those tailings to improve the next work you undertake?
References
Aristotle. (1934). Nicomachean ethics (H. Rackham, Trans.). Harvard University Press. (Original work composed ca. 4th century BCE).
Epictetus. (1890). The discourses of Epictetus, with the Encheiridion and fragments (G. Long, Trans.). George Bell and Sons. (Original work composed ca. 2nd century CE).
Mackey, A. G. (1914). An encyclopedia of Freemasonry and its kindred sciences. Masonic History Company.
Marcus Aurelius. (1916). The communings with himself of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, emperor of Rome (C. R. Haines, Trans.). Harvard University Press.
Pike, A. (1871). Morals and dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. Supreme Council of the Thirty-Third Degree for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States.
U.S. Geological Survey. (2024). Critical minerals in mine wastes. Mineral Resources Program.
U.S. Geological Survey. (n.d.). Mine waste as a resource. U.S. Department of the Interior.
The biggest improvement, I think, is that the mining metaphor now actually develops rather than merely decorating the essay: mining → processing → tailings → reprocessing → recovered gold → capital for the next mine. The USGS material makes that even better because the idea of returning to old tailings for previously overlooked minerals is something that actually happens, not just something we're inventing for the analogy. (USGS)
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