How to Deal with Constructive Criticism as a Writer
It’s nothing personal
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Sending your work off to be edited can be a scary thing. You’ve invested long hours into crafting what you believe is your best work, have gotten feedback from trusted friends or colleagues, and now it’s time for a professional to do their thing.
You’ve made the choice to hire a skilled professional, so what do you do when your manuscript comes back with comments and the inevitable markups? Here are some ways to help you deal with feedback without getting defensive or angry.
Talk it out with the editor before sending the MS
If this is the first time you’ve hired an editor and you’re a little nervous about the entire process, don’t be shy about saying so.
Most editors are kind, not-scary-at-all people who agonize over how to present hard truths when they need to be said. It helps sometimes to know if a writer is a “go ahead and tell it like it is” person or an “I’m a little insecure about this whole thing and need gentle truths” person. We’ll still say what we need to say, but we may tailor our approach accordingly.
Remind yourself why you hired someone in the first place
Editors have specialized skills. As a writer, you may be extremely skilled or you may need a lot of hand-holding and guidance. You may even be a careful self-editor—if so, your editor will thank you for it!
But when push comes to shove, even your eagle eyes may not be enough. Editors are continually keeping up with the changing language, and we study the rules and styles that surround it. Most writers are not editors, and therefore need to hand their work over at some point to the person who literally makes it their job to know the rules to polish the work.
Mentally prepare yourself for the worst
Why? Because it won’t happen.
What’s the worst thing you can think of as a writer? My guess is this: “As your editor, I can honestly tell you that I hate your book with every fiber of my being, and you should have never put pen to paper. This also means I don’t like you as a person. Please hand over your keyboard and stand in the corner.”
Trust me, even when a manuscript is a train wreck, your editor will never say those words. Our job is to encourage through teaching and correction. We do our best to make sure whatever we say will build up, not tear down. And what we do to your manuscript does not reflect on you, the person, regardless of what it may feel like at the time.
Get yourself into a receptive state of mind before opening the document
If you’re already stressed, wait to review your manuscript. Please, for your own sake, this is so important. If your water heater broke and it’s near freezing outside and you’re waiting for a repairman to show up, consider that to be a bad time to open up the document.
If you’re too busy to deal with any corrections or changes that need to be made and can’t work on your book until the weekend, then don’t open up your edited manuscript on Tuesday and worry about it all week. All you’ll end up doing is racing through the markup, glancing through the notes or queries, and not really absorbing anything anyway.
If you’re working on a different book and you’re really on a roll, feeling creative, and writing as fast as the ideas are flowing, then don’t stop the wave to look through edits for another book. Whether it takes a day or two, or a week or two (provided that your editor isn’t expecting revisions back within a short time frame), give yourself the time to focus wholly on what’s working right now before completely shifting your mindset to work with a separate book.
Take a little time to process
So you’ve opened the document and read through the edits. There may be some easy fixes and some simple approval needed—I usually approve all the must-do things like punctuation, spacing, or typo correction, but some writers want to see it all—and there may be some bigger-picture items that need addressed.
Create some distance between those easy fixes and the bigger repairs. Adjusting the easy bits will go quickly, and it will be encouraging to see so much red ink go away.
In the meantime, taking a day or two to mull over the larger items might allow your creative gears to start turning. Think of how many ideas we come up with while showering or driving, while walking through the woods, or when we’re just resting in a peaceful setting. Getting away from it, even for a short period of time, is enough to reboot.
Make a list of the most important things critiqued
If there are a lot of notes about a certain topic, and it’s one that was mentioned by more than one beta, for example, you may wish to pay closer attention to it. Editor Rachel Rowlands talks about this in an excellent article, “Dealing with Feedback On Your Writing,” and lists some of the categories to pay attention to.
Sometimes, the simple act of categorizing things helps us to see a pattern much more clearly than trying to look at the big picture.
Don’t fall back on “the reader won’t notice”
Recognize why the editor made each change and always, always assume the reader will notice.
Let’s face it, there are readers out there who will overlook bushels of typos because they’re in it for the Happily Ever After and they just don’t care. And there are readers who will leave a scathing review because there were two misplaced apostrophes in an entire novel.
As much as I love the idea of a reader who is relaxed enough to not get bothered by errors, I don’t think I’d take their book recommendations seriously, because they wouldn’t recognize a good book from a bad book.
Don’t get angry and argue each point
Ask as many questions as you need to. We encourage it, because it helps you to understand why we’ve made certain changes. It also helps us to understand why you may not want to accept a particular change. But please do your best to refrain from getting angry that someone dared to make corrections and/or suggestions.
First, you’ll only work yourself up more, and that won’t allow you to be receptive to any constructive feedback. Additionally, arguing with the person you hired either tells us that you’re difficult to work with, not willing to learn, or more concerned about being right than in doing what’s needed to make your work better.
There’s nothing wrong with having preferences. Every writer has them. But when you insist on things that are incorrect, or debate almost every single change, it’s discouraging and brands you as unprofessional.
On the other hand, your editor shouldn’t be forcing changes on you that you’re not comfortable with. They can explain their reasoning for a certain change and can show you examples of why it should be done, but no one should be getting heavy-handed with the other person. It’s your book and no one else’s.
But be aware: if there are too many changes you’ve rejected, your editor may request to have their name omitted from your book’s front matter and from the acknowledgments. It’s a less-than-ideal situation, but it happens. If an author rejects enough edits during the course of the work, that work is not representative of what the editor is capable of, and they don’t want potential clients to think that’s as good as they get.
The most important thing to remember
Here it is: the feedback is given with the intention of improving the writing. Period. As editors, we hope our authors learn from each round of edits so they write better and better. It may be frustrating at times when we see the same mistakes from novel to novel, despite our best efforts to educate, but the bottom line is that it’s our job to take care of those mistakes, and that’s what we’re getting paid for.
If you’ve hired someone for a manuscript critique, a beta read, developmental editing, or copyediting, then trust that they know the market well, are educated in their chosen field, and want what’s best for you and your book.
Just like you do.
For a related article, see “When the Editor-Client Relationship Doesn’t Work.”
