The Power of Feedback

Howdy! I have been working on my revisions, which gave me the idea to talk about feedback.

Published authors have critique partners, editors, copy editors, and many have an army of fans who keep them honest with constant reviews on sites like Amazon, fan letters and tweets. They get their work reviewed in blogs, specialized magazines. and so forth. 

In other words, they get constant feedback from a plethora of sources. They know what works and what doesn’t, or they have a better insight than we do.

How can we achieve the same?

Two words: critique partners.

A steady critique partner is like marriage. If you have a good one, be appreciative :D

And when I say a good one, I don’t mean someone who will tiptoe around your plot holes just because you two are friends and that person doesn’t want to hurt your feelings.

I’m talking about someone who understands the craft of writing enough to know what a conflict is. Someone who enjoys reading the type of book you want to see on the shelves. Someone who can be honest with you.

I need honesty to improve. Tell me what works and what doesn’t. That simple.

I know it’s hard, because you work for a whole week (sometimes, a whole month) to polish that chapter and then boom. Your conflict is weak. No one can relate to your heroine. And the hero… let’s not get started with the hero.

 But this feedback is important not only for us to hone our craft, but for us to learn how to accept criticism and to keep an open mind about our work.

After all, if you want to be a published author, you are no longer writing for yourself. You are writing for everyone else. That’s what I’ve started to realize.

Of course, you should write from the heart. Write what you know. Write what you love to read. We all know that. But at the same time we keep that in mind, we should also make sure what we write is interesting for our readers.  

And keeping that in mind, I shall return to my editing dungeon!

Have a great Sunday, everyone ;)