Writing is a never-ending journey – one that I’m glad to be on.
There will never come a day when I have mastered it. There will never come a day when I’ve completed it. There will never come a day when I stop trying to do better than I did before.
If that day ever arrived, I’m not sure what I’d do with myself.
Thankfully, I’m confident it never will. That means I can keep pushing to be a better writer, and person, and one of the ways I do that is by seeking out feedback and criticism on my work whenever I can.
Here are a few ways I did that. Maybe they’ll help you, too!
Writing groups and workshops
Writing groups and works were quite a shock to me when I first participated in them. While I had found a few as a teen, they were a bit aimless and lacking direction. At the time, though, they served a purpose, and the people were honest. I needed that.
At university, though, my eyes were really opened as to what writing groups and workshops could be.
Suddenly I was surrounded by 30 people who all had the same, or similar, goals as myself. There was a little bit of apprehension as to how I’d compete against these talented people (and maybe they felt the same, I’m not sure) but I soon learned that I wasn’t there to be better than them – I was there to get better myself.
It took a bit of time to get used to, but having my work analysed by so many people was…refreshing. It helped to look beyond my own perceptions and see things from different points of view. As we were all interested in different genres, we had to balance what was relevant to our subject but also take on board that, on a technical level, we were studying the craft.
The workshops were great, too. I took inspiration from them with my writing exercises page, as we’d often come up with ideas and stories in different ways. It was awesome see what we’d create even though we started with the same things.
Beta readers
When I started writing longer projects, writing groups became harder to work with for me. I didn’t just want a page or two, but the whole story looked at. Now, don’t get me wrong, these groups can still pick up things about your writing from these pages, but I wanted me.
When the story was drafted (usually after the second draft), I found three beta readers. I had the base of the story set, but I needed to know if readers felt the same.
For me, I wanted a writer, a fan of the genre and a neutral party to the genre.
This gave me three distinct views of the story, and the goal here was to have them give me, mostly, the same feedback. Sure, they’d pick up on different things and I consider every point carefully, but if the general consensus is aligned, I’m on the right track and I can keep drafting with the purpose of refining the details rather than reworking the overall plot and world.
Friends Vs strangers
Some people will definitely disagree with me, but I don’t want friends to give me feedback very often – and the same goes for family.
I’m sure there are some out there who can be unbiased, but I need in-depth, technical and objective feedback and people close to me are more likely to try and shelter me from problems rather than be honest and let me fix them.
I’ll never bite someone’s arm off for helping me, even if I disagree. I’ll fight every point, but in the end, if the reader doesn’t get it, I’ve not done my job right.
I have some friends who I trust to be objective, maybe because they’re writers or creatives themselves, but I’m very cautious over friends helping me in the creation and editing processes for the first time.
Growing as a writer
The point of all of this, of course, is to produce the best story I can. I want to be proud of what I’ve created, and that’s also making sure the whole experience a reader has is positive.
Not everyone is going to like my work, and that’s okay – I have stories I’m not a fan of either – because we’re not robots. We’re different and want variety. That’s what makes this world, and creative people, so great. That we can come up with these tales is amazing, and as I said at the start, we can only keep getting better.
I’d be interested to know what you think about feedback and criticism. Do you actively seek it out, or are you building up to it? There’s no need to rush – we all take it at our own pace.
Don’t miss any updates from the blog by signing up to my newsletter. You’ll also receive updates on my upcoming books and any events I’m a part of!