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"This month, we’re getting up from our desks. That’s right, all you desk potatoes: Stand up, right this minute..." —Lenard-Cook
Thanks so much for joining last month’s conversation about introversion and extroversion. Many of you mentioned what gets you to the desk, which the Lonely Writer first discussed in her May 2011 column, Getting to the Desk.
This month, we’re getting up from our desks. That’s right, all you desk potatoes: Stand up, right this minute, and stttrrettccchhh. Aaaah! Feels good, right? But don’t worry. Tempting though it may be, the Lonely Writer is not abandoning her column to lead a gentle yoga session. Rather, we’ve all gotten up to talk about the dreaded F-word. No, not that F-word. The one that strikes fear in many beginning writers’ hearts: feedback.
" If you believe that telling you how to improve your work is a publishing company editor’s job, you’re 90 years behind the times." —Lenard-Cook
There comes a point when you’ve got to share your work-in-progress with someone else. As much as you’d like to believe otherwise (especially if you’re an introvert), your work cannot go straight from your laptop to the New York Times bestseller list. If you believe that telling you how to improve your work is a publishing company editor’s job, you’re 90 years behind the times. Today’s editors read, read, and read; occasionally “fall in love” with a manuscript; and then (their most difficult task) try to convince the sales department that it’s worth the risk. On those rare occasions that editors and salespeople agree and a publisher buys a book, the editor then heads back to her reading pile to find another manuscript to love. Clean up your sometimes untidy prose? Not a chance. If there’s any untidiness, you’ll be buried at the bottom of the slush pile.
It therefore behooves (a word the Lonely Writer has always wanted to sneak into a column) you to have others look at your work before you send it off into the larger world. You can join a critique group, ask another writer you’ve met through a local writers organization, pay a writer who also edits (there a lot of us) to look at your work, or attend a writers’ conference (see July 2011 column). You emphatically should not ask your spouse, mother, father, son, cousin, sister-in-law, best friend forever, next door neighbor, or any other person with whom you have a long-term relationship, even if (especially if) they currently have the #1 book on the New York Times bestseller list. None of these people can give you the kind of feedback you need at this point, which is to tell you what needs to be done to bump your book up to the next level.
"Praise is candy. Critique is protein. A good critique will give you the energy to dive back into a work..." —Lenard-Cook
Praise is candy. Critique is protein. A good critique will give you the energy to dive back into a work you care about and tweak, tweak, tweak. The Lonely Writer wants to hear about your critique experiences, so join the conversation on Authorlink’s Facebook page. And yes, you may sit back down, now.
PEN-short-listed author Lisa Lenard-Cook’s most recent book is The Mind of Your Story: Discover What Drives Your Fiction (Writer’s Digest), which originated in her columns for Authorlink. With Lynn C. Miller, she’s co-founder of ABQ Writers Co-op (abqwriterscoop.com), a creative community for New Mexico writers, and co-editor of the literary magazine Bosque. She’s on the faculty of the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference and the Board of Narrative Art Center in Santa Fe. Website: lisalenardcook.com
