Are Emotions Clouding Your Judgement

Last week, I was working with my developmental editing class and we were discussing things that get in the way of a strong edit. One of those would be our emotions. I want take some time today to expand on this beyond simply our edits and look at all of our work in the publishing world.

Let's start first with the editing. First of all, if you are editing your own writing, you know you already love it. You have been putting your heart and soul into it and frankly, you don't see any other way of writing it. Guess what? That's your emotions talking. The problem now is if someone else provides a suggestion, or even if you stumble upon another approach, the odds are you will be rejecting those suggestions. Darn it! You were right in the beginning and there is no way you can be wrong now. 

But maybe you are.

Now, let's focus on those critique partners. One of the students in my editing class openly admitted to editing someone else's work and did a pretty harsh critique, but, when it was time to provide the feedback, she toned back the edits and left things out. Her concern was that telling the author all of the things that were wrong could maybe discourage the author. Yes, that might be true. But now consider when the editors and agents start telling the author, AFTER she has started submitting those projects, the things you saw originally and were too afraid to tell her.

I think you get the idea here. But let's take it to another level. I brought up last week a discussion about writing organizations and conferences. Many authors dumped their memberships with the RWA because they were mad about how things were going. That's fine. I have no problem with them making that personal decision, but my question is simple. Did those authors make a decision based on gut emotions or actually think through the issues. I did ask one person if she had actually looked into the FULL details of one of her concerns, and more importantly, IF those details and concerns had any impact on her or her writing career. The answer was no. She reacted based on an emotion, which is indeed perfectly fine, but we have to also look to see if that emotion is accurate.

What about those bad reviews. You get one and go on a rampage about it. Yes, a bad review hurts, BUT, did you look at the other 99% of the reviews that loved your writing?

The deal is, writing IS personal. It is about being human. That's why literature is in the humanities field. But there is a time when we have to look at those emotions and maybe put those in check to make a rational decision.