Coorlim’s Guide to NaNoWriMo 13: Feedback

Image courtesy of National Novel Writing Month

Coorlim’s Guide to NaNoWriMo is a multi-part series on writing, creativity, and the work-life balance throughout the month of November. Today we’re talking about feedback.

Feed back on my feedback

Here are some general hints and tips regarding soliciting and interpreting feedback on your work.

Find and cultivate good beta-readers. These are the ones who will get back to your promptly.
Don’t talk about your ideas too much while they’re developing. Discussion triggers the same mental pathways as actually working on your story, but isn’t nearly as useful.
You are the worst judge of your own writing. This will always be true. You need outside input.
Consider the source of any feedback. Who are you writing for? Readers. Writers don’t read like readers anymore. And critics don’t read like either.
When a reader tells you that something isn’t working, listen to them. They might not be correct as to why, but something there is bothering them.

On Writing Groups

Quality varies.
Assess why you’re there.
Assess whether it gives you what you want.
If not, don’t go.
There’s a guy there that just likes to get everyone talking about his work. Don’t be that guy.
Personally I believe they function best as a place to get together with other writers for solidarity and to bitch about the writer lifestyle.

A reviews of reviews

Reviews of your finished work are an important topic, so I’m giving them their own list here.

Don’t respond to your reviews. Don’t. Just don’t.
Read them. I know it’s scary. Read them anyway.
Don’t take them personally. Don’t take them as honest truth. They’re one reader’s subjective opinions.
Mine them for what you can use to improve your writing, discard the rest.
They’re not for you. They’re for other readers.

That’s it. Next time we’ll be discussing dialog attribution, or, why to just use ‘said’.

Questions? You are invited to either leave a comment below, or ask directly through the comment form.

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