All Writers Need Feedback

I was recently having a conversation with a new writer about her novel.

She is currently in the process of editing her work and to be supportive I offered to give it a read and give her some feedback -  she told me that she did not want anyone reading it until it was published. 

I asked her about editors, beta readers, or sensitivity readers and she told me that she did not want anyone reading it before it was published. 

I wish her the best of luck, but as I told her and will now tell you - 

Publishing a novel without feedback is setting it up for failure. 

Feedback - whether from fellow writers, beta readers, or editors is an essential part of novel writing that can not be skipped. 

Receiving feedback is more than just having someone else point out mistakes in your novel or tell you all the places that you may have gone wrong. It's about finding out which part of your novel may show your weaknesses as well as strengths, finding places where your story might have rambled on, or places where the plot holes were so large the reader could have put their arms through the page. 

Feedback hurts, and I understand why there are writers who are afraid of it - but if you're afraid of hearing from one of your closest friends or your fellow writers that something in your story isn't working - then you are not ready to put your book in front of the public with a limitless amount of people the opportunity to give you all the feedback they wish. 

When it's too late for you to fix it 

Positive and negative feedback is there for one reason and one reason only - to help you make your story the best it can be. 

I wish we could do it ourselves, but it's not possible. 

After writing and reading and writing and editing our story -  eventually, we reach a point where we grow blind to the errors and we wouldn't be able to point them out if we had a magnifying glass. 

I once handed a novel over to a beta reader to discover I had changed the protagonist's name halfway through the story. I had edited that novel more times than I could even begin to count - and I never noticed. 

If you're not ready to share your work with someone close to you to receive feedback - you are not ready to share it with readers.

Take the leap of faith.

Make your novel the best that it can be. 

Best of luck. 

With love, 

B.K. xo xo

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This story was originally posted on Medium.

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