Receiving Feedback

Receiving feedback on your novel writing--my novel writing, to more accurate--can be a trifle traumatic. Which may be the understatement of the century.

My critique group meetings, in all honesty, were sometimes stressful for me, especially when giving feedback that I knew the person didn't want to hear (but he needed to hear). Fist fights; thrown dishes; tears; blood. I'm kidding. C'mon. Thrown dishes? I don't think so.

Even helpful, right-on-the-money corrective analysis, from experts, and factoring in that all writing judgments are subjective. A little questioning by the receiver of the feedback is a valid activity. Still, this sought-after feedback can cut a writer to the quick.

I'm having my present novel in-progress, Sagebrush at Stony Creek, content-edited by a skilled editor. It seems there are five or so consistent, systematic show stoppers throughout the first half of the novel. The first half is all I could afford to have reviewed, but I get that there are issues that need improving, from her viewpoint.

Stepping back from the defensive emotions I had, I can see there is plenty that is substance in her commentary and so I'm setting out to correct them. But to show the point that it is emotional, I'll give you a peek at my first response letter back to her.

"Hi Xxxx,

"After picking up the pieces of my heart and gluing them back together, I will wait a few days, so as to let my high emotions die down. I was so glad to finish this thing, finally. I’d hope it wouldn’t be perceived as awful…but I did wonder. Thanks for an honest & expert appraisal...."

My reply goes on from there to each point that "needs work" and defends the mistakes, explaining my silly thinking at the time, going into what I plan to do about them, but the real action will start after we talk on the phone and work out an efficient stategy for putting out a most-publishable version of my story. Is it that hard? Well, for some, they have their strengths and their publishers down, those like John Grisham and Steven King, maybe it comes a lot easier. They have written a lot more fiction than I've ever dreamed of writing, and they do it daily.

Perhaps, that's the most important thing about our differences in skill and publishability. I take heart in the fact I heard somewhere that Samuel Clemens took more than seven years to write his Adventures of Tom Sawyer!

And, in those days, they didn't put such an emphasis on brevity. Seems Clemens contained some 230,000 words in his "little" book about Tom, Becky, and Injun Joe. My much-too-long piece weighs in at 110,000 words.