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 … [Read more...]
How to Handle Beta Readers’ Feedback
Knowing how to handle beta readers' feedback can make the process of writing a novel much smoother, and there are pointers that can help. In my previous post on the importance of beta readers in novel writing, I said how important beta readers were for all authors, no matter how experienced they are, but getting feedback can be tough. Good beta readers will tell you what the flaws are in your writing, and that's not always easy to hear, especially if you expected a few small things, then get a flood of major issues. It's easy, and natural, to get discouraged when you hear about what isn't working in your manuscript, so the most important thing you need to remember is that the aim of the feedback is to help you make your book better. How to lessen the sting of feedback Before you read the feedback, remind yourself that: no matter how harsh it sounds, it's been given in order to help you improve your book; receiving and dealing with feedback is an important part of the … [Read more...]
The Classic Defensive Maneuver – do you do it?
The classic defensive maneuver is classic because it’s an automatic reaction many, if not most, people have when their work is criticised. It’s only those who have more self-awareness than usual or who have discovered that reacting this way does no good at all, and, in fact, often causes us to act in ways that when seen with hindsight are downright embarrassing, or, at the least, make us appear rather immature and inexperienced. The classic defensive maneuver seems absolutely right to the person offended by the opinion that causes the reaction. When in the grip of it, the sufferer sees nothing other than their own perspective, a perspective created by one single aim: to prove that one’s work is not as the critic says it is. When in the grip of the classic defensive manoeuvre we must, at all costs, retain our sense that the art work we have laboured over is perfect. If others criticise it, it’s because they don’t understand, not that we’ve failed to create something people can … [Read more...]
