We often think of writing as a solitary activity. And often, it is. However, the most experienced writers have learned along the way to invite trusted reviewers to provide feedback. Professionals know they need good, honest critique of their work, and they’ve learned to value the expertise of others.
That still doesn’t make it easy.
It takes a certain amount of vulnerability and humility to let another person scrutinize our work, and then, like an exacting surgeon, pick our words apart with what we perceive as unfeeling precision. Our reviewers couldn’t possibly know the places our heart ventured or the traumas we re-lived when we committed the words to paper. The reviewer merely sees that we used a singular verb with a plural noun. Or that the sentence describing our pain appears too flowery.
The reviewer tells me that she was confused in chapter three—she catches that I used the wrong name for my bad guy. Oh, yeah. I was playing around with naming him after my evil childhood neighbor. My surgeon-friend also points out that I most likely couldn’t have popped a dinner in the microwave when my character lived in 1962. And cornerbacks play defense, not offense.
So I thank my reviewers. I check off the helpful information about typos or slow dialogue and quickly make the changes. The goofy suggestions prompt me to… well, forgive me, but I probably roll my eyes and think “Like that’s gonna happen.”
The painful suggestions—to delete some of my favorite scenes that didn’t move the plot along—cause me to stop and think. I take a deep breath and say, “Okay, I’ll temporarily move it to my novel bank. I’ll save it for a rainy day or another place or another book.” It may never see a page in any book, but I didn’t experience the pain of delete in that moment.
If we can endure the process of critique, in the end, our work is better. It’s better because we invited others in.
