The Importance of Honest Feedback

A couple weeks ago, I covered why indie authors needed editors. Not long after, I was invited to expand on the piece and have it posted on the IRC website. This got me thinking about what comes before that editing. Beta readers, feedback, revisions, and polishing—for most authors anyways. I’m huge on beta readers, I have several of them and I beta read for others. I hate giving negative feedback, but I always couple it with something positive. Recently, I had one where the plot was good, but the execution was poor. I told Mia several times, “This person is going to hate me after this.” Because when I spoke to the person, they’d told me they’d gotten nothing but positive, glowing, feedback.

Luckily, she didn’t hate me. She asked me questions about it and then set on to work to clean it up. Honest feedback is what authors need to thrive. We are never going to grow and learn if we don’t get it. When I get feedback from my betas, readers, or editors and it’s bad, overwhelming, whatever, I let myself mope around for five minutes. That’s it. No more, because I know these people aren’t out there to hurt me, they are there to help me. I wouldn’t be anywhere without them. I consider every suggestion, even if I don’t use them, because there’s a chance that it could help the story.

This doesn’t only go for writing, but your whole product, covers and everything. You may think that you have the best cover on the market, but others may not think so. Your family and your friends of course are going to say, “Yeah, it’s great!” Because they are afraid to hurt your feelings (or they don’t care that much…). Have a team of people that you trust to give you honest feedback and keep them close. If someone tells you simply ‘it’s good’ start asking questions, why do you think it’s good? What could I do to make it great? What didn’t you like? If they can’t answer it, or give you canned answers, take them off your list. If you give them a document to mark up and there’s barely anything and no notes to accompany it, take them off your list.

Now that being said, beta readers, readers, and editors: Do not be afraid of hurting our feelings. I’m not saying that you have to be harsh, but you don’t have to sugar coat things either. Don’t say: this is a pile of shit, tell the author specifically what you don’t like, follow up with some good things too. You need to be honest with us. We can take it! We learn with honest feedback, we won’t learn if all you do is stroke our egos. No one writes a perfect first draft, we don’t catch our own plot holes all the time, and we certainly don’t always see from the readers POV. Don’t be afraid to ask questions to get us thinking.

Burnt Out On Editing

Burn out. It sucks.

Due to my burn out I would totally end this blog post right there but I feel the obligation to explain myself. I am burnt out on editing Waking Up In Bedlam. True story.

I know as a writer I'm supposed to be all "this is the greatest thing ever and every part of this process is so much fun!" and others will say "If you aren't having fun and enjoying it then you aren't a real writer." I call bullshit on both those statements. No one is having fun and enjoying every millisecond of the writing process, some of us can admit when something is sucking and draining us. I don't think it makes me less of a writer to admit that I am burnt out. Note: I said "burnt out" I did not say "quitting" or "giving up", I just think it's healthy to admit out loud that I am burnt out. End of story.

Why am I burnt out? 1) I'm a perfectionist, I want WUIB to be perfect because I am so damn scared of the reviews that will say something along the lines of "You can tell this is self-published by the editing." 2) It's hard to kill the lines or scenes you love, even when it is what is best for the story. 3) Plot Holes. One of my beta readers found some plot holes, one of which requires rewriting an entire chapter. How the hell did I miss that? *shrugs* I have no clue, but it is there plain as day.

So there ya go, that is my bitch/complaint. Editing, I am not a fan of yours. But as much as I don't like editing, it is a process that is necessary. It is a critical step that must be completely thoroughly in order to put out quality work. As much as it might be a drag you have to just pick yourself back up and hit it again. I've been working in 2-3 chapter chunks at a time. That seems to help, I don't get so hung up on it and can work through my blahs as I try to map out that re-do chapter and sort these plot holes out.

Also, on the subject of editing, someone suggested autocrit.com to me the other day, I tried the free version and it was pretty awesome, except for the fact that the free version only let's you do 500 words at a time and gives you very limited tools (by very limited I mean only two). While it was very fun and I think it would be great for me to use in my first draft edits to take some of the burden off of my beta readers/editors there is no way I could afford the price-tag, for the full version it is over $100 and that my friends is just not doable. If I have time I'll do the free version in chunks, although a 60k manuscript would take 120 visits to the site.

Do you enjoy editing? Are you a stickler for grammar already so editing is a breeze for you? Do you use editing software?