How to receive feedback on your writing without letting it crush your soul

Letting people read and comment on my work is terrifying. It’s like I’m offering another human a piece of my soul to critique. (Jeez, overdramatic much?) But if we want to become better writers, we have to put our work out there and ask for feedback–and not let that feedback crush us.

It’s IWSG Day!

But before we get into that: Happy IWSG Day! In case you’re new here, I participate in the monthly IWSG (a/k/a Insecure Writers Support Group) Blog Hop, which happens on the first Wednesday of each month. We offer words of encouragement to our fellow writers and share our doubts, fears, struggles, and triumphs. Some of us also answer the monthly optional question. This month’s question is: It’s the best of times; it’s the worst of times. What are your writer highs (the good times)? And what are your writer lows (the crappy times)? Thanks so much to our wonderful co-hosts this month: Kim Elliott, Melissa Maygrove, Chemist Ken, Lee Lowery, and Nancy Gideon! Stop by their blogs and leave ’em some comment love.

So, what are my writer highs and lows? Both come from the same activity: getting feedback on my writing. I’m sure you’ll be entirely shocked to learn that the highs happen when someone likes my work and the lows happen when they don’t–or, more accurately, when I receive what is euphemistically called, “constructive feedback.”

I’m also sure you’ll be entirely shocked to learn that I have a few insecurities about my writing. Hello? What’s the name of this blog hop again? If it were the Secure Writers Support Group, it would, a) be a bit of an oxymoron, because why would secure writers need a support group? and b) consist of no one except maybe a couple of pompous literary writers who write long, flowery posts stroking their own, um… egos.

But I digress. Now where was I?

Oh, yeah. How to receive feedback when you’re an insecure writer with a soul as sturdy as wet onion skin.

My wonderful experiences with feedback

I didn’t really start growing as a writer till I let other people read and comment on my work. After I’d been writing fiction for about three years, I joined a critique group, and it changed my writing and my life. Those folks gave me so much guidance, support, and encouragement; I would never have submitted my first story for publication if it hadn’t been for them.

Since then, I’ve gotten feedback from other critique partners as well as contest judges and even the occasional stray family member. Mostly that experience has been positive. I’ve heard horror stories about cruel critique groups and nasty reviewers, but I’ve never had those experiences. Earlier this year, though, I got feedback that sent me into a serious funk and derailed my writing progress for a couple of months.

My bad experience with feedback

Back in January, I entered a contest called Author Mentor Match, which is similar to the now-defunct (sob) Pitch Wars. You submit a query package to teams of mentors, and if they’re interested, they request the full manuscript. Winners get mentored through a revision to prepare the manuscript for querying agents. I was fortunate enough to get a full request from one mentor team, and though they didn’t choose me, they were kind enough to provide feedback on my manuscript.

Before I go any further with this story, I want to be very clear: I’m deeply grateful that these incredibly busy published authors took the time to provide me with feedback. They didn’t have to do that, and nothing I say here is intended as criticism of them.

Some of the big-picture feedback they provided was really different from any I’d received before for this manuscript–and I’d received quite a bit, including from a professional editor as well as critique partners, beta readers, and a Pitch Wars mentor team who sent me one of the nicest rejections I’ve ever received. Implementing this new feedback would have required a complete rewrite of much of the story, including significant changes to both plot and character.

OK, fine. Not what a writer wants to hear, but that’s life. Yet their comments gnawed at me. Their suggested revisions were not in line with my vision for the story–at all–and I started worrying that there was no market for the story I wanted to tell and that I was kidding myself if I thought I could succeed as a writer. I lost all motivation to write, and though I kept writing, I dreaded it and hated it and was therefore not very productive.

And then I felt bad for feeling bad. Apparently my ego is too fragile, my skin too thin for this business, so I should just quit.

It was not my finest hour.

So, what did I (finally) do? I revisited their feedback and tried to understand why I was having such a strong reaction to it. And what I figured out was this: They wanted a different book.

Not just some improvements, a willingness to reconsider some decisions, but an entirely different book. And it wasn’t a book I wanted to write.

For the first time I understood the advice about talking with a potential agent about their vision for your book before signing with them. Because it was demoralizing to even think about making huge changes that are not in line with my vision for my work.

Again, let me be clear: They weren’t wrong. They weren’t mean. In fact, they were quite kind. They just had a vision for my work that didn’t match mine.

5 steps for receiving feedback

So, what did I learn from my, ahem, less-than-optimal response to receiving difficult feedback?

1. First, read through the feedback and thank the giver. Even if you disagree with it. Even if you think the person who critiqued your work has the literary taste of a salamander on Ambien. Don’t argue and don’t explain. Just thank them.
2. Next, go have your tantrum/crying jag/three-day bender. Get it out of your system. Don’t start implementing their suggestions, don’t delete your manuscript and all the backups in a fit of despair, and try not to do what I did and get stuck in the, “My writing sucks, and therefore I suck,” spiral. Your emotional reaction is normal. Let yourself have it. If it’s bad, take a break from writing and do something fun that nurtures your raw, bleeding writer soul.
3. When you’ve calmed down and sobered up, read the feedback again. Maybe that’s a day later, maybe a week, whatever feels right to you. It should hurt less this time. You may also be in a better place to understand what aspects of your work led to the feedback and where the advice makes sense for your story.
4. If some of the feedback still feels wrong, consider why it feels wrong. Are you overly attached to an element of your story that needs work? Is the feedback not aligned with your vision for your work? Has the person giving the feedback tried to take over your story and turn it into something you don’t want it to be? Is there a kernel of useful truth in the feedback that you can use even if the specifics don’t work for you? Noodle on those questions. Maybe ask someone else to take a look at the work. Send it to a beta reader or ask another critique partner to look over the sections in question.
5. When you have some clarity on the questions above, come back to the troublesome feedback again and develop an action plan.

Whatever you do, don’t let one person’s opinion cause you to give up on your story–or yourself. Get more opinions and look for patterns in the feedback. If a piece of feedback is an outlier, you may be able to ignore it. If several people are telling you something, it’s probably a problem. But even if it is a problem, it can be fixed, and you can grow as a writer by fixing it.

What did I finally do?

I implemented the feedback that made sense to me, then sent my manuscript to a beta reader who has lots of experience in my genre. She gave me some useful feedback, which I’ll implement… later. Right now I’m working on a different manuscript that I’m excited about, and I’d rather work on something I love than go back to a manuscript I’m sick to death of. I’m not giving up on the first one, just taking a much-needed break from it. I trust that I’ll eventually land on a course of action that makes sense for both my story and me.

How about you? If you write, how do you process difficult feedback? How do you stay positive when you’re in a slump?

Want to share some more of my insecurities? Check out my other IWSG posts.