Don't Wait Until Your Book Is Done For Feedback

I did a post over on FB recently and got a comment from an author who said he simply never wanted anyone to look at his writing until the book is done. I do believe a lot of authors have this same mentality when it comes to their writing.

And unfortunately, this is a bad route to take.

I fully get that you are "an artist." You don't want to send out bad writing for others to see. And, at some level, this is a good thing. This IS why we say that you should have a completed and edited manuscript before sending it out for submissions with editors and agents. But that is not what we are talking about here. This is about getting feedback DURING the writing process.

Getting that early feedback is going to prevent a lot of pain and misery later on. Hearing what other people have to say is going to keep you from heading in a direction you don't want to be. When I work with authors, we can often catch those mistakes you might not see as the author doing it on your own. The reason is simple. You are so immersed in the story, you cannot see past that scene your are working on.

That early feedback can also yield some very positive outcomes. Again, writers are so focused with the story they saw in their head, they only see one direction. When someone else looks at your work, you can often get some ideas that might add some additional depth to your story. Maybe a conflict, scene or solution you simply did not see the first time.

As I said, the problems with working on a fully written manuscript become HUGE! If I catch problems in the first five chapters, those issues will impact things later on in the book. Now those scenes you really worked hard on in chapters nine and on will likely have to be changed.

This is something one of my authors always faces when she gets her first round of revisions back from her editor.  Her changes are not tweaks on single scenes, but issues that run through the whole book. This requires tweaking single lines or small elements of scenes in 75% or more of her book. Fortunately for her, she always works closely with her editor, sending her chapters in small increments so they sort of predict the revisions that will be needed. Often they will say in those early feedback sessions, "let's see how this goes...it might work out," but even then they are prepared to fix the problems.

Trust me on this one. GET THAT FEEDBACK EARLY!