Last week I did a post on the necessity of getting feedback on your book from beta readers and/or professional editors in a developmental edit, but what if you get negative feedback or criticism? How to deal with criticism of your book? Feedback you take as criticism can make you very disappointed, depressed, even devastated.
I totally understand this because I’ve written a couple of books that I’ve archived, and probably will never finish, because the feedback from my beta readers indicated that the books had serious flaws, ones I couldn’t fix easily, ones that would take more time to fix than I was prepared to put in on the project.
Getting that kind of feedback is always disappointing, but we need to be prepared for it because the aim of having it read by a beta reader or developmental editor is that they point out the flaws in our book so we can improve it. Even if you don’t feel that your beta readers or developmental editor has criticised your work, as an author you can be sure you’ll get some criticism sometime because not everyone will like your book. Once your book is published, those readers who don’t like your book can leave negative reviews, and they’ll probably hurt.
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The usual emotional process of coming to terms with criticism
It’s easier to deal with criticism of your book if you understand the process you may go through in coming to terms with it. If you take negative feedback as personal criticism or a personal attack, defensiveness tends to kick in automatically, and this is the kind of process you might go through:
- Shock: You thought your book was pretty good. You’ve worked so hard on it. It can’t be true. They must be wrong.
- Defensiveness : You criticize and reject the reviewer/beta reader/editor and their evaluation. What credentials does the reviewer have anyway? What do they know? It’s only a personal opinion. It doesn’t mean anything. You tell yourself this to try to devalue the criticism. You want to be able to ignore it, so you try to prove that the person doesn’t know what he or she is talking about. At this stage you won’t see anything worthwhile about the reviewer regardless of their qualifications.
- Depression: You feel terrible, crushed, even devastated. If they are right (despite trying to dismiss the feedback, part of you says that at least some of it must be true), then you’re a terrible writer and you’ll never be any good. (They didn’t say that; it’s what you’re reading into it). You feel like giving up
- Letting go: You give up your defensiveness and seek a way out of your depression. You may give up completely for a time, or you forget the book and do something else. You may decide you’re never going to write again, or that there are more important things in life and you put your focus elsewhere. This isn’t a bad thing. You need to let go in order to clear your mind so you can start fresh with renewed energy, and giving up is a way to let go, so is putting your energy and focus elsewhere. I recommend giving up for at least one minute. Totally letting go, even for an instant, is a very refreshing thing to do and it realigns your priorities.
The bare minimum here is letting go of your defensiveness. You have to come to a point where you’re prepared to consider that perhaps the reviewer has a point and that rather than rejecting it, you could learn from it. - Objective evaluation: After a break, you come back and look at the feedback in a more objective light. Okay, you think, what is this person actually saying here and does it apply? If you don’t let go, you can’t do this. You’ll be stuck in defensiveness or depression.
- Acceptance: You recognize the value of the feedback and see where it’s valid. A professional view has more value than one from someone without professional experience in the publishing industry.
- Moving on: You consider how to improve your work in light of the feedback. Then, if you just can’t face working on it again, you put the book aside and focus on improving your next book, or you do the work and improve the book.
- Satisfaction /gratitude: You recognise the improvement in the book, or at least in your knowledge and are glad you went through this process.
How to deal with criticism in a less painful way
You can lessen the pain of dealing with criticism by cultivating a positive way of thinking. Consider the following:
- You are not your book. Criticism of your book is not criticism of you as a person. Your book is not you, so don’t take the criticism personally;
- It’s feedback, not criticism;
- Your integrity as an author is not diminished by one less-than-perfect book;
- No book is perfect;
- Most books can be improved;
- Negative feedback will help you improve your work;
- Let go of defensiveness so you can go directly to the objective evaluation stage.
Do you have any other tips for dealing with criticism?
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After getting use to fours and mostly fives in Amazon, I was crushed when I received a three. At first, I was devastated. I wasn’t going to write again. But later I re-read the review. The reviewer loved my prose, the story and characters but took exception to the editing. I was just about finished with the sequel to Almost Human and this review prompted to look for a better editor and publisher. That’s when I found Tahlia Newland and eventually AIA. What a difference a good editor and publisher make. Tahlia reedited Almost Human and rebranded it with an amazing cover by Velvet Wings. The rebranding breathed new life into my book. It is a book I’m very proud of now. My only regret was not finding Tahlia and AIA sooner. I realize that review set me on a much better course that made my good book a great one.
I think it’s great that you saw the necessity to have it re-edited, and that you had sufficient faith in the story to be prepared to pay for the work to be done. That’s the kind of attitude that one needs if one is to make a career out of writing, or simply to publish a book you can be confident is top quality. That willingness to bite the bullet and do what was needed – employ a line editor – resulted in a transformation from a mediocre book into a great one. I really respect you for that.
Your experience highlights the role of the line editor, as distinct from a copy editor. A copy editor does not improve the prose, only a line editor does that, and unfortunately a lot of indie authors just go for the copy edit because it’s a cheaper proposition, but their book suffers for it. Comprehensive editing is one of the things that makes AIA Publishing different from other indie publishers. It did grow out of the Awesome Indies movement to foster quality in indie publishing, after all. http://awesomeindies.net/
I have dealt with negative criticism over the years I have tried to establish myself as a writer. That I am still trying to write after all these years of negative criticism is a mystery.
I could have given up a long time ago and gone to do the mundane and receive immediate affirmation and gratification. Here am I, still burning the midnight oil in the quest to earn my spurs as a writer.
I have risen as many times as I have been been floored by negative criticism. For me negative criticism is my work declared not good enough or worthy of publication.
Instead of bowing out in defeat, I have turned my adversity to fortune.
Criticism made me realise the following:
– writing is a specialised area
– there are basic prinicples and skills that you have to learn, formally or any other way. You must learn these basic skillss or you’ll churn out poor and off tune writing after another.
– you must practice and always practice, until you’ve polished your craft
– you must read widely, but particularly from your chosen genre.
This is about it.
All really good points. Anyone can write a book, but it takes solid study of the craft for any book to be a good one – or paying for a ghost writer!
Excellent advice from Tahlia. My own experience with a longish literary novel is that I could not after one and half years find representation from a literary agent, despite very positive responses from “Beta” readers. And yet, I have hesitated self-publishing through avenues such as Amazon or Audible (I’m a very experienced as a poet and performer). Something in me has told me to wait. After six months, and mulling over the range of feedback received from my readers, I have in the past week gotten back to work on some rough edges that bother me. I’m going to revise yet again (the book took me quite a few years to complete with multiple revisions and a writers’ group’s input) only because I feel it can be better. My advice to others is to follow your excitement: if it’s exhausted on a project, or you feel bad about your lack of success with it, find another project and keep writing!
Good advice. Also you’re listening to your gut, and that’s important. I found that when I received really negative feedback on something, I did actually know in my gut that something was wrong, I just couldn’t see what it was, and needed someone else to point it out.
I decided to submit my work early on to see what Tahlia had to say. Her critique pointed me in the right direction. It meant eliminating one of the characters and tossing the first chapter.
It took a day to decide. I put a lot of time into that chapter and that character. I finally opened the computer and pressed delete. She was right.
I finished in record time and the story was much better for it.
It’s hard to ‘kill your darlings’ as it’s called in writing cricles, but sometimes we must do it for the sake of the story. It’s good you managed it.