When your baby isn't perfect

1/28/19

Recently, I finished the first draft of my next project, and sent it off to a trusted friend and author to provide beta level feedback.

Unless you've been through this process, you probably wouldn't understand the anxiety that accompanies receiving such feedback, and how it affects the author and the final product, so I'll try to explain.

My manuscript, the one that I thought needed nothing more than spelling, grammar and a little polish here and there, needed more than that. My beta reader had identified some real issues. There were inconsistencies in my characters, as well as some chapters lacked conflict and the humor was uneven, and some pieces fell flat.

By the gods! This is my baby, and it is supposed to be perfect! Clearly he just missed the genius of my writing and this is all a mistake, right? That was my first thought, and I had a bit of a defiant attitude for an hour or so.

After further thought, I realized I hadn't thanked him for his feedback, so I send a nice Email thanking him for all his work, and stepped away from it for a few days. With a clearer head, I looked at it again.

Who would have imagined that he could have been right? I did have issues needing to be addressed. Was the story good? I still believe so, but once I include all his feedback, and get even more reviews from others. I think this story can go beyond good and can be "really quite good."

If you write, do yourself a favor and team up with another author to provide each other with honest, no BS feedback. Sometimes it will hurt. Get over it and use the feedback to make your work better, and learn from it all. Its easy to tell someone their work is great, but it takes a really good friend to tell you when your work needs help.

James Peters

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