I Placed This Blog Entry in Both My Palms… And Opened Them To the Wind

The fiction writer’s dilemma is this: you can’t improve without feedback from readers. But you can’t get feedback from readers without showing them things that definitely need improvement.

There’s a partial resolution: often, I don’t know how desperate my work is for improvement until I show it to someone and they tell me. So instead of being aware of what nonsense I’m showing other people all the way through the process — giving it to them with that sinking feeling in my stomach, agonizing over how they’re receiving it, etc. — I just have to contend with arg-I-can’t-believe-I-thought-that-was-ready-to-be-seen regret.

(For example, if you are one of the many persons who has a copy of Bad Light from two Decembers ago, the one in which the plot all but ground to a halt before chapter six, ugh, I’m so sorry.)

It’s not that I’m ashamed to show or to have shown anyone my works in progress. Novels, even great ones by literary geniuses whose words have survived for centuries, don’t spring out of the heads of writers fully formed. I don’t mind people seeing what goes into them any more than I mind dinner guests watching me while I cook. Nor am I ashamed to have written bad things — we all do, sometimes, and if I obsessed over every spelling mistake, factual error, or poorly thought-out idea that made it onto this blog, I’d never finish typing another entry.

Instead, the discomfort comes from the idea that the person reading my work is willing at best to give me only one chance to show I’m a decent writer. If I hand them something subpar, or if I’ve grown in my craft since I wrote the piece I’m showing, it’s like I just got introduced to someone with my fly down or in the middle of belching. We’re told so often that first impressions are important, and aspiring writers hear it in all sorts of different forms: hook the reader in your first page, or nobody will buy your book. Hook the agent in the first paragraph, or they’ll toss your letter aside without reading it. Put your foot in your mouth or break publishing etiquette, and you’ll be blacklisted from that house or corporation or industry for the rest of your life.

This, perhaps, is why I feel the least pressure about giving my work to fellow writers. I can trust them to understand that writing is a process — how first drafts differ from final ones. And when I enter into critique partnerships or groups, the understanding is that we’ll keep on reading each other’s work as we all grow. Even though we’re putting whatever faults we might have as writers on display for everyone to see, we’re also put our strengths out there, too. And we can respect each other’s skills while acknowledging that we all have further to go to perfect our craft.

Contrariwise, sharing my drafts with non-writing acquaintances brings the experience to a whole new level of stress. Of these, the easiest are adults whom I don’t know personally and who don’t work in the publishing business. If they don’t like my work and never read it again — so what? I’ve never seen them before this and have no reason to see them afterwards.

Young people I don’t know personally are slightly more stressful, because I feel like I have some responsibility toward them and their parents. Well, more precisely, as a childless adult whose social circle seldom includes those under the age of 18, I generally meet kids and teens who are not related to me through their adult relations, teachers, or caregivers. So I feel like I put these adults in a tough spot where they’re sort of responsible (in the eyes of, say, parents, guardians, etc.) for what I’ve written. Not to mention that whereas an adult stranger will try to let you down easily if they really didn’t like your stuff, younger strangers tend to speak their minds.

More stressful than any type of strangers or acquaintances are… well, I can’t decide which is worse, so I’m going to lump the two together: friends and family. Friends because: 1) these are people whose opinions I do care about; whom I don’t want to associate me with boredom; and with whom I don’t want things to become awkward because they feel like they have to read the MS even though they don’t like it*; 2) and no matter HOW careful I am, no matter how much I go through my MS a million trillion times and note the names of every character who appears even for a brief cameo, I always wind up having given one of the more unpleasant characters a name and/or physical description similar to that of someone I met after the story or play was written.

I seldom accidentally give characters the same names as family members, probably because it’s not like I’m meeting new relatives all the time. However, sharing my work with family runs a whole different set of risks. It’s to their credit that they’re honest with me about how a story strikes them; my mom is quick to tell me that, say, she didn’t like my main character in my last draft, or that part of the plot is confusing. And I don’t mind getting criticisms from my family; criticisms are always helpful, provided they actually are criticisms and not just, you know, insults. However, even potentially helpful comments can make things awkward.

When I finished my first novel MS at age 12-13, my dad the civil engineer carefully went through the draft and typed up a list of dozens of questions that read unfortunately like a cross between an English assignment and an interrogation (e.g., pretend but accurate examples, p. 51, line 10 The narrator compares James’s anger to a fire. What made you think of this metaphor? In what other ways is he like a fire? p. 51, line 13 If magic is generally measured by volume, should we assume it behaves as a fluid or a gas?)

Being only thirteen, I, uh, didn’t appreciate this careful attention as much as perhaps I would now**. This appears to have had the unfortunate side effect of discouraging my father from making comments on any more of my stories.

Similarly, while my aunt and I of course enjoyed the time we spent together, and I’m sure she valued that I shared my stories with her when I wouldn’t let anyone else see them, I nevertheless somehow suspect there were times she didn’t relish being inundated by a fifteen-year-old niece’s questions on every minute detail of a 120,000-word MS. So I guess I should distinguish between readers’ opinions of my writing and readers’ opinions of me as a writer who is also a person who should be nice to people: it’s the latter that makes me nervous of sharing stuff with my family, not the former.

Finally, the most nerve-wracking readers of all: editors and agents. When I send out an MS on submission, I’m confident that it’s the best I could ever make it. When I get back a rejection and re-read my work, I’m convinced that not only is it the stupidest thing anyone ever wrote, ever, but that this particular agent or editor will remember my name and throw out any envelope I send for the rest of my life, and I must have been brain-dead on the day I decided this work was ready to submit. Also, the phrasing of my cover letter was likely unintentionally rude. And probably for good measure, its recipient looked up my Facebook page and website just to make sure they could run away if they ever spotted me in real life, saw all this stuff I put here, and decided I’m a complete tool.

Of course I know that this is exaggerated paranoia. But it’s still how it feels, even if just for ten seconds after I re-read my hook paragraph.

When I wrote that aforementioned first MS, Mom printed it and sent it out to five or six publishers for me, whom she researched herself. Looking back: 1) yeah, very dedicated and supportive parents; 2) probably a package that raised about a million red flags for the poor slush-pile readers who encountered it and still were (mostly) kind enough to send non-form replies. Many of the publishers got back to me with encouraging praise and suggestions that I work on short stories and try novels in a couple years.

I’ve since read plenty of published authors who write about how glad they are that they never submitted anything they wrote as kids or teens, but I dunno. I’ve been around enough to know that there are way more people who are mistaken about their writing being awesome than are mistaken about their writing not being ready to submit, and I’ve written enough to know that I’m no exception to this tendency. But, on the other hand, Mom submitting those five copies for me still accounts for the bulk of novel submissions I’ve made to this date. I went madly off in the opposite direction: focussing maniacally on details of punctuation or word choice, perfecting the tiny things within my control because an MS without outside input becomes stagnant that way. I rarely sent — no, I rarely send out queries or manuscripts anymore. And that’s something I’ve got to change.

Many of the same writers who are glad they never submitted their early stuff seem to feel that way at least in part because if they had, some of their worst work might have been published. And it’s true that I’d be horrifically embarrassed should the great first-MS opus of my youth Just James or even the original drafts of the novels I’m currently working on ever see the light of day. But I can’t say that I’m sorry that they went out to editors or readers before they were ready. Because what I see with 20-20 hindsight is: how else was I ever going to learn what parts of my writing needed improvement? And how else was I going to get used to putting my stuff out there?

So I’m sorry that some of you have read or have seen my work before it was ready, because I’m sorry you had to spend time bored and confused or feeling awkward about shoving the MS in the back of a drawer. But, selfishly, I’m not sorry I gave it to you in the first place.

I suppose I should finish by saying this: I’ve just finished the latest revisions on Bad Light, the YA fantasy MS whose early draft some of you may have seen, and Our Man Tom, the MG adventure-fantasy that only my crit friends have seen, and a very long time ago at that. Also, a fantasy/mystery short story, “Speak of the Devil and He Doth Appear”, which I hope to turn into the opening chapter of a novel-length MS made up of 10 short but connected mysteries, that I think only some of my family and crit friends have seen.

If you are a writer friend and wish to trade MSs, let me know! If you’re a non-writer friend or a writer friend who doesn’t want to trade but would still like to have one or more of these MSs to potentially read/comment on/allow to moulder in the depths of your hard drive, also let me know! If you have the old version of Bad Light and would like to get the new shiny one — well, you see where this is going.

The only two things I ask of anyone who has an MS of mine are: 1) please don’t show it to anyone else without my explicit permission; and 2) please don’t post any part of it online without the same. Thanks, and looking forward to reading your work!

* Important: just for the record, I can’t imagine any scenario under which I would be upset or even annoyed with anyone for not finishing an MS I gave them. Even if I’d given it to a fellow writer or an agent or an editor, so long as they let me know not to keep waiting, and, if professionally appropriate, gave me a reason they were stopping, I’d be fine.

** I said “perhaps,” Dad! PERHAPS.