Courage to Share
Find the Bravery to Collect Feedback on Your Writing
Today’s Shelf Life is for the people who have the writing part down but are still working up the nerve to share their writing. I have thoughts on why it can be scary to share writing and how to rethink the sharing process, and then some suggestions to help you ease into the sharing process.
I obviously don’t know what writing is like for anyone else. Personally, I write in two modes: In the first mode, I neatly transcribe my well-organized thoughts into written words. In the second mode, I stab into my soul and let it bleed all over the page. The writing that results from this second mode is often more difficult to share than that which proceeds from the first mode.
Don’t get me wrong, it is difficult to share either of them. I don’t mind sharing Shelf Life essays all the livelong day but sharing fiction is much more difficult. Someone could tell me my writing is bad and then my life would be ruined.
Unfortunately, to become good at anything, humans have to start from a place of being bad at it and work upward. Writing and storytelling are skills, built with study and practice. No one comes out of the womb knowing how to write a good novel or short story.
Further, practice in a vacuum can only take a writer so far, so fast. Yes, if you keep writing you will get better at writing over time. However, without feedback, the speed at which you can grow and the total growth you can expect will be limited.
This spring I planted two planters of baby coleus plants. One planter I placed on my deck in a protected spot and watered carefully. The other planter I forgot about and left outside in the elements. The plants I forgot about are three feet tall now and the ones I babied are dead. There are two morals to this story. The first, which is relevant to today’s Shelf Life, is that exposure will make you thrive. At least it did for my plants.
The second moral is, don’t grow where someone else thinks you should be planted. Dig your rootball up and plant yourself in a spot where you’ll thrive. “Grow where you’re planted” supposes that someone or something planted you there. Tell that someone or something to heck off. Self-determine.
Anyway, sharing writing is hard but it’s the exposure writers need to toughen up and thrive and grow to be three feet tall like my coleus.
But sharing needn’t be an all-or-nothing proposition. It doesn’t mean you have to join a critique group of strangers and put your work on the chopping block. Or publish your work and let the reading public do the honors. There are plenty of low-stakes ways to ease into sharing your writing for the purpose of collecting feedback and kickstarting your craft growth.
1. Share Anonymously
No one can trace your writing back to you, the author, unless you want them to. Pen names are a time-honored way to share your work anonymously so that you may decide after your work’s reception whether you want to attach your real name to it or not.
Sharing anonymously can look like a lot of things. First, several of the other suggestions below can work together with anonymity. You can hire a freelancer under a pen name, work with a critique partner under a pen name, or submit to magazines/agents under a pen name. (You probably can’t solicit trusted friends under a pen name; they kind of need to know it’s you.)
Sharing anonymously does not, in any way, jeopardize the copyright of your work or the security of your intellectual property. If you reach the level where someone is paying you for your writing, then you’ll likely have to attach your real name somehow—the IRS will find a way, even if your readers don’t.
Sharing under a pen name is a great way to dip a toe in the water and see how you feel when you receive feedback on your work. If you decide you want to die of mortification, the fake identity can die in your place.
2. Hire a Freelancer for a Manuscript Eval
Freelancers don’t judge. Or, more accurately, we only judge in the way that you pay us to judge. When you hire a freelancer to evaluate your manuscript, you are working with a professional. It’s like going to the doctor and confessing an embarrassing personal issue: Freelance editors see this stuff all day long and it doesn’t shock us. It’s our job (and our pleasure) to see the rough, unedited manuscript before the polish that turns it into a salable book.
I’ll acknowledge that there is no freelancer/client privilege like there is with an attorney or a therapist. However, a freelance editor has no interest in—nor any motivation to—speak ill of your work, either to you or to anyone else. A freelancer is running a business, for one thing, and they succeed when you come back to them with more work in the future. They don’t want to ruin your business relationship.
Moreover, a freelance editor’s success relies on delivering helpful feedback in a way that is palatable to the author. It is their job to give feedback respectfully and without judgment.
3. Seek Out a Critique Partner
One is less intimidating than many. A single critique partner with whom you trade work might be less scary than participating in a critique group. There are tons of ways to match with a critique partner online. You need not use your real name in the exchange. I worked with one critique partner for a while who changed their pen name regularly. I have no idea who they might have really been.
Your best bet for a mutually beneficial, non-scary critique partnership is to seek someone who is at the same level of writing expertise and experience as you. This is a critique partner, not a critique mentor. Working with someone in the same season of their writing career as you helps build your writing skills and your critiquing skills, and you can take the ability to critique back to your own future work.
4. Submit to Magazines and Agents
Submitting to a magazine, agent, or editor is a bit like hiring a freelance editor and a bit not. On the one hand, you’re entrusting your work to a professional who has seen it all. Have they seen work that’s better than yours? Yes. Have they seen work that’s worse than yours? Also yes. Agents and editors work fast and have no interest in poking fun at your work or cutting you down (most of the time).
On the flip side, you are unlikely to receive actionable feedback from an agent or editor. They do share feedback sometimes—and some magazines, at least, offer the option to receive the editor’s feedback for a fee—but it’s not something you can count on. Instead, it’s like taking a class pass/fail instead of graded. They either accept your work or they don’t. You can take this yes/no proposition as a weather vane of how you’re doing with your writing—but do take failure with a grain of salt, as no magazine or agent can sign all of the good work they see.
Unlike hiring a freelancer, submitting to an agent or editor is usually free. And if you get a “yes”—yay! You’re published!
5. Ask a Trusted Friend
Finally, you can get by with a little help from your friends. If you are blessed with a friend you trust with your creative work and your feelings, you can ask them for their honest feedback on your writing. If they are not a writer themself, they may not provide the kind of detailed, actionable feedback that directly grows your writing. However, trusting a friend with your work can be the gateway critique—the marijuana of literary critiques, if you will—that mentally prepares you to share your work with others down the line (the fentanyl of literary critiques, I guess).
To approach a trusted friend, first ask them if they are willing to do this favor for you and whether they can commit to reading some of your work and providing feedback. You don’t want to start down this road only to have the friend never get to reading your work. Next, let them know exactly what you are looking for in their critique. You should not be asking for a detailed copyedit, but instead big-picture feedback—Was it fun to read? Did you stay engaged all the way through? Were there parts that didn’t make sense? Was the ending satisfying?
Set your friend up for critique success. Don’t give them too much material—for instance, give them a chapter and not the whole novel, unless they ask for more—and give them a generous deadline. But do give them a deadline, even if it’s a soft deadline. Without a deadline, reviewing your work might never surface at the top of their to-do list.
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