Giving Critiques – The Climb #882

Friday 23^rd July 2021

Finally, the heat has started to drop and with it, I’ve actually felt like I’ve been able to do something.

Today’s big task has been reading over an agent submission for a friend.

I always find these difficult to do. I rarely offer to do them because for me to do as good as a job as I’d like it takes me a lot of time. However much I do, I always feel like I’m rushing it.

It’s that reason why I always feel so grateful when someone offers to read something for me. It’s always a big job, both in terms of time and in terms of the thought that needs to go into it.

I’m a slow reader so reading an entire book is usually out for me. Instead, I’ve started to adopting what an agent might do. Give me your letter, the first three chapters and a synopsis. I should be able to identify fundamental problems from there.

So I spent a lot of time doing that today.

And here’s the other problem. I’m generally a positive person when it comes to feedback. I don’t want anyone to feel bad. But neither do I want to sugar-coat things. As a writer, you have to find you own way to deal with honest feedback. My loyalty doing this job isn’t to the writer, it’s to the written piece.

And inevitably you do this work, and you send it back, and things go quiet, and you know they are processing, but you can’t help but feel like you’ve made someone’s day shit… no matter how complimentary you were.

In this case, the writing wasn’t bad. They made a lot of the same mistakes I do. They say the same thing in two different ways. I’ve had to learn to pick one and delete the other. Not a massive issue… that’s why we have edits. I was also a bit ruthless cutting bits. It’s something I’ve had to learn.

I’m not sure if this was the author’s first ‘professional’ critique, but if they’re going to start sending to agents, this is the level they need to work at. They need to find a way to deal with the feedback. And I’m not saying they didn’t.

But you always feel that perhaps you weren’t nice enough, even when you didn’t have anything awful to say. Perhaps that’s the thing with me. The better something is, the less I’ll sugar-coat it.

The process did make me realise I’m probably a better writer than I thought. I gave another friend some feedback I’d heard about the market (to take or leave) and their response (intentionally or not) left me feeling a bit shitty. As a result, I’ve been spending a few days trying to remind myself that I can actually write. I don’t feel it right now, especially with The Accursed being such an unholy mess. As a result, I did a thing where I collated some feedback I got from some major publishing houses that basically say I can write.

Stupid, I know. I just recognise that it’s so easy to knock my writing confidence right now. And therefore, that’s the last thing I want to do to someone else.

But the sign of a true writer isn’t someone who doesn’t get affected by criticism, it’s someone who finds a way to deal with it, and use that information to move forward. Sometimes that’s agreeing. Sometimes that’s by understanding why the point was made but disagreeing with it, yet using it to make different changes.

Either way, this is why I sometimes hate reading over a submissions package for someone. It always looks a lot worse than it is.