On Listening When You Want to Throw Things and Break Stuff
Hello! I hope you’ve had a good start to spring! Before we get into the topic du jour, I have a related and exciting announcement to make: I have a launch date for Names in Their Blood!
Book 2 in the Second Sentinels series will be released July 4th, 2024. So, if you haven’t read book 1 yet, you might want to pick it up now. You can get it as a free ebook here, or as a paperback wherever books are sold.
There will be an in-person book launch party at my local con, CONvergance. Expect more details about that as we get closer.
But right now, I’m wrapping up a 9 day, break-neck-speed edit of the book, to prep it for beta readers.
For those not familiar, beta readers are those lovely people who agree to read your book before it’s finalized for publication, who you trust to give you feedback on the book, in order to improve the book before it goes out into the world.
I’ve been looking forward to sharing the fruits of my labors, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a nerve-wracking process.
And it’s got me thinking about today’s newsletter subject: how to take feedback on a creative project.
Because often, here’s how it goes- an author or artist labors over a work straight from the heart. They realize it is time to see if other people can interpret the message and feeling they’re trying to convey. They go out, heart in hand, asking other people to look at what they’ve made.
And the people who they’ve gone out of their way to request critique from…give it to them.
And that’s when things all fall apart.
Because sometimes, what the creator in question actually wants is reassurance, and that wonderful sense of connection that comes from someone understanding your work.
But if you ask people for honest feedback, they tend to try to give you honest feedback!
I am lucky to have been trained on this well before I began writing. I didn’t start writing so much as fanfiction until my late 20s. But I was attending adult classical drawing and painting lessons starting in Junior high.
And being an adolescent in the grown up class it was made very clear to me that I was expected to handle feedback in a mature, open, even-handed way.
I was, of course, completely faking it; probably pretty badly. But I knew enough not to pitch a fit or argue. Ultimately, that’s what my teachers wanted, so they let me get away with that.
And a few months in, I no longer flinched when my teacher would take an eraser or bit of charcoal to my drawing. By the time I was permitted paint, I thought nothing of getting the direct feedback that my lovingly painted eye was in entirely the wrong place and would have to be scraped down and redone elsewhere.
Because wow it was making me improve fast. And I’d come to trust that my very kind teachers wanted me to improve. They wanted me to improve more than they wanted me to create one good piece. The progress superseded the product.
Now though, I am trying to create a really good product- an excellent novel, that I am committing to integrating into my ongoing series, that I’m planning to sell for years to come. That I’ve been working on for a really long time.
And the people I’m getting feedback from are my peers, not my teachers.
People who are not being paid to make me better. They are doing me a favor, out of the goodness of their hearts.
So it’s lucky that I’m so good at staying calm and open in the face of feedback.
That’s a total lie. I’ve pretty well gotten the hang of feedback on my visual art, but my novels hold so much of my feelings and thoughts and way of thinking about the world. All my lovely cultivated chill is out the window. It feels personal. And that is very dangerous to ones sense of chill.
But learning to take critique in visual arts taught me the value of being open and calm about feedback. I know that listening works. Plus, I know that if I’m a tantrumming diva, nobody is going to want to help me, next time.
So, I have a few guidelines for myself. I like to think these guidelines would be useful to many other pursuits, as well.
1) Wait to read the feedback till I’m feeling ready to actually think about it. If I read feedback and then try to run off and be a calm, sociable, attentive person, I’m going to be a wreck. I’m not going to look at the feedback during the work day, either. This is hard, but for me, it’s necessary.
2) Shut up. I am absolutely banned from talking to anyone who has given me feedback about that feedback for at least 3 days following receipt of same. I’ve found that, usually, three days is long enough for me to stop feeling defensive, and then I can converse normally again. The only exception to this is my wife, who is unphased by my “method” and soothes me with hugs, chocolate, tea, and bemused assurances that I did not write a garbage book, everyone doesn’t hate me, and the world is not coming to an end. They will not pay any attention at all to any defensive whining I exhibit during this time, and seem content to wait me out.
3) Listen to problems, but not always solutions. I think I stole this tip from Neil Gaiman, actually. He’s said that readers tend to be correct about what doesn’t work, and wrong about how to fix it. They can see what’s wrong because they are reading it, and you’re writing for readers. But they want to fix it how they would fix it. And you can’t write their book, you can only write your book. So, I weight feedback importance based on identification of problems, not solutions.
4) Say “thank you” and mean it. I don’t wait to be open and enthusiastic about feedback. When I get the feedback, I do my damnedest to remember to immediately thank them. Even if someone gave me utter crap for feedback (it’s never happened to me, but I assume it happens to someone somewhere) they still took the time to read and write and that is a monumental gift.
5) Get excited about fixes. It’s no good going into the next round of edits with a grudging sense of needing to fix an embarrassing mess I made. I love my books! I want to make them shine! Whenever possible, I want to fix things with a sense of joy that I have new information about how to make my book the very best version of itself that it can be. That gives me a sense of curiosity, which leads to creative problem solving and better fixes that improve things outside the original problem. That’s a big win.
Here’s hoping I don’t come back next month, after an inbox full of feedback, needing brand new protocols for how to cope!
But mostly, I’m excited to keep polishing this book, and then, to sharing it with all of you.
Quickly, before I sign off till next month, I want to note that while I told you all that there’s a brand new comment section where you can talk to me and, dare I suggest- each other? I didn’t mention how to actually access it!
If you open the link in the sign-off labeled "view this email online" there’s a comment section at the bottom of the post, there. I hope to hear from you!
Thank you, as always, for joining me,
Lee Brontide
Thank you for joining me for another month of Shed Letters. If you know someone who you think would like to join us, please feel personally invited to share any of these emails, or send them an invitation to sign up here. And remember that Secondhand Origin Stories is available for free as an ebook here, or in paperback form from your local independent book shop or wherever books are sold.